Alongside our studio tour we have recorded this session walkthrough of StudiOwz showing owner and engineer Owain Fleetwood Jenkins - he shows us his microphone choices, instrument placement and more while recording brilliant session musician Dan Moore. This video hopefully gives some insight in to how the studio sounds and shows the in-house instruments available to use if you book the studio - Dan Moore shows off the keyboard selection very well in 2 short tracks to showcase the studio. One of the things that we were keen to show is the range of instruments available at the studio for musici ..read more

Following on from their retro-inspired BA-1 synth plugin, Baby Audio sends me into some other worlds with their new Atoms plugin. The first of Baby Audio’s virtual instruments was a fun re-creation of a mini vintage synth. The sounds and presets were very juicy – modern, with retro underpinnings that made you smile, with plenty of warm and squelchy sounds, and plenty of useful analogue synth sounds. It has recently been updated with a useful separate FX strip plugin, an arpeggiator, and several other handy improvements. You get sprung Atoms is Baby Audio’s second VI and is an altogether ..read more

Shot at ARC Studios with Damo Webster playing the drums and 2 x Grammy winning Cameron Craig producing, this short video captures the spirit of the studio and the engineers expertise and helps explain why Matt Taylor won the British MPG's Rising Star award 2022. Matt walks us around his drum recording session and covers the drum placement, treatment and the microphone choices & positioning with some really GREAT audio samples to audition - we think you will be impressed at the drum sound that Matt is getting with this setup. Some of the microphones that Matt used include: Kick Drum - AKG ..read more

Watch and hear how easy it can be to record a great piano sound for your track using affordable microphones.  This short video was recorded by Matt Taylor to show how simple it can be to get an excellent sounding piano for your tracks using this Steinway upright. Matt likes recording upright pianos from the back using a pair of Calrec CM 654 (but you can substitute for whatever nice mics that you have available) and to 'give the piano bigger elbows' uses a Shure SM57 to add in some hammer noise.  We recorded Issac Neilson playing to demonstrate the technique and hope you like the so ..read more

It has been some years since I reviewed a new version of Altiverb. Audio Ease have however continued during all this time to quietly add new impulse responses. And these are available free to users of this grandaddy of convolution reverbs. Designed for music and post, there are improvements in this major new version that will please both camps. Creaky The last version had been doing great service but was starting to look a bit creaky, with audio always a little slow to react to parameter adjustment while calculations were going on under-the-bonnet. It still needed Rosetta to run on Apple Sili ..read more

This is different!! Imagine you're in beautiful countryside, miles from anywhere but under your feet is an amazing studio hidden away making this one of the most unusual and interesting studios we've visited*. Studio owner Paul McCracken says that this is his 4th and very last studio he's building. We can believe him, with so much effort and expense sunk in to this amazing studio it's hard to think of how he could do better. Are Friends ELECTRIC? is located deep in the rolling and picturesque hills of Southern Devon. Clearly, Paul McCracken and head recording engineer Rob Waite have spared no ..read more

Set in over 300 acres of landscaped grounds including woods and lakes is a barn that dates back to 1600 something that has been converted in to an amazing residential studio. Available instruments include at least 3 excellent pianos including one of the best Steinway's D Grand's we've heard. Russell Cottier visited School Farm to record a tour around the studios and sit down with engineer Stefano Ciavetta and owner Andrew Sunnucks to chat about why they undertook such an ambitious project - did their history of regularly booking some of the biggest studios in the World shape their thinking (a ..read more

Jarle Bernhoft joined us from his personal studio to talk about his love of making music - Oscar Ball who chatted with his asked about Jarle's interest in production and record making. Having created so many great sounding records we were keen to find out more about what motivates and drives an artist such as Jarle to deliver such great sounding music. Jarle has worked and learned from many great producers including Adrian Bushby and Gil Norton. A big thanks to Jarle for making the time to film this interview and to Jack Kaye for making the connection and making this happen and Charlotte for ..read more

Dave Pemberton's Drum Recording session walkthrough - Dave shows how he recorded a classic Ludwig kit. The mic's chosen depend on what’s available but in this example Dave chose to use the following: First off is a Shure SM57 on snare aimed pointing at the centre of the drum. Under the snare is a Sennheiser 424. Toms are each using a a standard 421 on the top of each drum, the mic just far enough from the drum skin so that you can get your fingers under. Kick drum used a Neumann FET 47 on the outside with an AKG ‘egg’ in the kick facing the beater, an inch from the skin. A pair of U87’s angle ..read more

dxRevive is a speech restoration plugin, designed to correct audio problems such as background noise, clipping, overly-reverby recordings. It can also restore missing frequencies using AI. Although designed for dialogue restoration, we thought we would have a look at uses for this in music. There are two distinct versions, standard and Pro; the latter is nearly three times the price of the basic version. Both versions include real-time processing and a single-knob workflow making operation very easy. The basic version includes the Studio sound algorithm, the Pro adds the ‘Retain character’ al ..read more