At the turn of 2020 I had been given a seemingly simple task: produce a backing track for my daughter’s upcoming singing competition. It was an enjoyable experience but, little did I know, I was about to stumble into a very frustrating issue that inadvertently plagues modern producers — it is something I call “Upgrade Hell”. This is the constant need to upgrade software to maintain compatibility across a vast production landscape. And, as I quickly learned, things don’t always work out the way you think.
We’re often asked if we recommend putting the “XYZ-brand” T4B into our Opto Comp and DA-3A.
The answer is emphatically, NO! I’ll explain:
In 2017, during the development of the Opto Comp, I dug in hard repairing and deconstructing vintage T4A and T4B optical cells from vintage LA-2A’s (btw, some of these units even used 3 photocells instead of 2; shows how much they cared about matching metering to the actual compression back then!). Every one of them, literally, was built in a way I hadn’t seen from any other manufacturer before. This research informed our decision to start making our own optical cells, in the same tradition as the originals.
We get this question a lot. Selecting transformers is a funny thing: You can get them ready-made, off the shelf, or they can be custom made to your spec. We often choose the latter, but the choice is more complex than that. Let’s dive in:
Myth #1: The one transformer brand that you’ve heard of is the “best” to use in EVERYTHING
This is a question we’ve gotten a lot recently. Last week we discussed why we don’t sell all three revisions of the 76 style compressors in one box; this week we’ll discuss why we won’t offer an “all in one” approach with these legendary EQ circuits.
We’re stoked to share Tape Op’s review of the AS78. Big thanks to Brian Tarquin and Tape Op team!
Check out the full article at https://tapeop.com/reviews/gear/163/as78-dual-peak-limiter/
I’ll start this with a story: I remember years ago being on the road with my bandmates somewhere in the midwest. We were super young and had a shoestring budget. (At one point i saw our singer eating what i thought was a sandwich, nope, it was just a folded up piece of bread) Anyways, we literally spent 30 minutes arguing in a grocery store on whether to buy peanut butter and jelly in the same jar or both in separate jars. Little did I know this would be a life defining moment for me. I argued on the merits of buying the best peanut butter in its own jar and the best jelly in its respective jar so I will do the following now.
We often get asked if we offer DIY kits of our products. The truth is that we’d LOVE to!! The reason that we don’t is because of the unpredictable availability of the NOS parts we pack into our products.
Last week we dropped a new preamp. We still have the MK-609, LA76 and Faircomp 670 coming this year.
We are always working on new and interesting units! While the pool is deep, we’d love to be able to really focus in on a few suggestions from the AudioScape family. What would you like us to tackle next? Reply and let us know
Cheers,
Chris
