Industry Talk

Up‑and‑coming engineers and producers deserve protection from exploitation, discrimination and sexual harassment.

A Grammy‑winning engineer shares his secrets.

The designers behind some of today's most innovative studio microphones tell us what we can expect from the mics of tomorrow.

Even at high sample rates, standard PCM audio ‘smears’ important timing information. A new digital format, MQA, promises vastly improved time-domain accuracy — without the huge file sizes.

To celebrate the magazine’s 30th birthday, the SOS team take a trip back in time, finding out what it was really like to work in a mid-’80s home studio.

Have you ever wondered exactly what goes on when classic hardware is recreated in plug-in form? Heres the full story from some of the industrys biggest names.

If there's one thing most of us would like to know, it's how to make some extra money — and if we can do it through making music or producing audio, so much the better!

I recently tried to purchase a Marantz CDR500 but I was told that, due to a new EU directive that bans the use of hazardous...

Is the German GEMA essentially the same as the MCPS? Does a band putting out its own CDs need to register with different people in different countries, or do these organisations cover all situations?

Since Bill Putnam's sons founded Universal Audio anew, the company have become well known for software emulations of old gear, as well as for their hardware recreations of vintage classics. We find out how they go about it...

Hard drives are getting bigger and that can only be good, right? Well, up to a point...

With the release in the UK of XP Media Center Edition, Microsoft aim to make Windows PCs a modern equivalent of the radiogram — the heart of a complete music and video home. entertainment system.

We explore the idea of understanding technology in terms of layers and abstractions, and how this makes it possible for a protocol like MIDI to be communicated via USB, Firewire and even Bluetooth.

We look at the reliability of hard drives and investigate some innovative video-related products from Sony, which could soon be commonplace in the audio world.

With the recent announcement of Yamaha's keenly priced 01X Music Production Studio, it looks as though mLAN, the Firewire-based protocol for multi-channel digital audio and MIDI, might be about to come of age. We take an early look at the new system.

There are many reasons why the digital delivery of media hasn't replaced traditional physical methods, but could one reason be that files just aren't very collectable?

There was quite a buzz about mLAN at the recent American AES audio trade show. Paul Wiffen reports on the latest developments.

After looking at the development of and theory behind mLAN, Paul Wiffen continues his series on the new FireWire-based music and audio protocol with a practical look at the effect it will have on the gear in our studios and how we connect it together.

Last month, Paul Wiffen explained how he heard about mLAN — a new data-transfer protocol which will allow us to send audio, MIDI, and even video down one FireWire connector. This month, he finds out from Yoshi Sawada of Yamaha's mLAN development team how the system is likely to work in practice.

I am a second‑year A‑level student doing Music and Electronics and have been a keen musician for 11 years. I...

A new interfacing standard is just around the corner which can carry digital audio, MIDI, timecode and hard drive communications down a single cable, in addition to the digital video and multimedia signals which the likes of Sony, Apple and others are already sending down it. Paul Wiffen, long an advocate of high-speed digital interfaces, investigates and finds that he may just have a new religion to evangelise.