March 2016 Magazine Contents

If you’re looking for a PC music creation environment that’s affordable, powerful and easy to use, Acoustica’s Mixcraft 7 ticks all the boxes.

Alexandernaut’s Fugue Machine arose from its creator’s interest in the music of Baroque composer JS Bach. It is a multi-phasic sequencer, offering up to four playheads capable of independent motion across the same musical landscape.

Audio Damage may be familiar to you as makers of some proudly idiosyncratic plug-ins, but they also manufacture a range of...

548 royalty–free breakbeats, recorded to sound as if they are the solo drum mixes from old vinyl records. 

Bitwig Studio might be the newest kid on the DAW block — but it’s growing fast!

Abbey Road Studio’s revered RS124 tube compressor has never been made available commercially... until now.

dbx are a big name in pro speaker-management systems. Now their DSP is available in a format that fits your pocket — literally!

Single-driver speakers have long been popular in the studio, and now Eclipse have brought the concept into the 21st Century with a Wi-Fi enabled model.

The Key9 takes in a monophonic or polyphonic signal from a standard electric guitar, processes the waveforms that come from the pickups, and delivers a remodelled sound, in this case emulating electric pianos...

AmpliTube 4 gives the virtual guitarist more amp, cab and miking options than ever before.

Korg’s single–handed analogue revival continues unabated, with the release of an affordable four–voice polysynth.

SynthMaster might seem like an ambitious name, but then SynthMaster is an ambitious synth...

LD’s latest PA range combines the benefits of a line–source sound system with a flexible and modular design.

Can the Cab Clone offer something new, or is it just another ‘me-too’ cabinet simulator?

Though costing less than a grand, this versatile mic can compete with some of the very best.

Mogees is a combination of app and vibration sensor which, together, translate physical gestures into notes played...

The first of a new series of sample libraries from NI serves up a lot of brass for your money.

All of Output’s products so far have been an attempt to break new ground in the world of sample processing. Their first...

This many-headed beast offers you the flavours of four classic ’60s London studio consoles.

What do you get when you cross a modular synth with a stompbox?

The PreSonus Studio 192 offers a great deal of functionality for its price. Is this the time to jump aboard the USB 3 bandwagon?

These files accompany the Sample Shop sample library reviews in the March 2016 issue of SOS.

Conceived as an affordable alternative to the Ondes Martenot, the Ondioline was invented by Frenchman Georges Jenny in 1940. Soniccouture’s Kontakt recreation stays true to the simplicity of the original, modelling its features and behaviour as closely as possible...

BonaFide acts as a low-noise, impedance-matching buffer which can be placed at the start of your collection of pedals, the idea being that it will save you from the evils of treble loss caused by long cables...

This fascinating and commendably detailed book by Howard Massey provides a wonderful overview of the significant recording studios in London in the ’60s and ’70s, as well as a few noteworthy facilities elsewhere in the UK. 

The libraries in this series forego the construction-kit approach of the genre–based Elastik collections and, instead, are built on a series of solo instrument phrases/licks that you can piece together to form a complete performance.

Reaper’s Custom Actions facility allows you to automate pretty much anything. We show you how...

Here are the top five Reason Rack Extension synths for under €$30.

Coldplay’s unlikely alliance with R&B hitmakers Stargate resulted in a truly trans–Atlantic production, which saw co–producer Rik Simpson clocking up plenty of air miles!

We walk you through the new features in Live’s Simpler sampler.

The Compressor plug-in got a new interface in Logic Pro’s 10.1 update, and there’s more to it than meets the eye.

The Compressor plug-in got a new interface in Logic Pro’s 10.1 update, and there’s more to it than meets the eye. Listen to the audio files.

A directory of all media pages that hold the associated media files for March 2016 audio examples.

Sometimes you can’t quite capture an instrument as you’d hoped, but when it comes to the mix there are a few tricks that will help get you out of a hole.

Audio files to accompany the article with before and after examples.

When Ornette Coleman died last year, a planned celebration of his 85th birthday turned into an epic tribute album. Either way, no-one wanted a “jazz guy” to mix it...

Our intrepid PA correspondent was tasked with amplifying a 17–piece vocal group in one of the UK’s most prestigious — and acoustically challenging — venues.

More than just a live-sound mix controller, PreSonus’s StudioLive CS18AI offers hands-on control over Studio One.

The new Commit Tracks option in Pro Tools 12.3 makes archiving your projects easier than ever.

Our engineer explains how to go about getting decent results from a live-band tracking session when pressed for time.

‘Sandboxing’ lets us run multiple simultaneous projects in Sonar.

The SOS team travel to London’s West End, to optimise a studio that helps homeless people record their music.

Cubase now offers powerful control over parameter automation, including a number of useful editing options.

Hal Ritson is one of the most in-demand producers on the deep-house scene. Here, he reveals the secrets behind the genre’s distinctive vocal sounds.

I’ve been looking for a compact CD transport to hook up to my home-studio DAC and I’m surprised by how expensive they are...

Musician Chris Thile is quoted as saying he'd decided never to record wearing headphones again. I don’t get this. What’s wrong with headphones?

Why do people put delays and reverbs on a separate track instead of putting it with the track that has the EQs and compressors? Do you have to do this?

Over the past few years, Hugh Robjohns and myself have visited quite a few schools and colleges running music technology...

We talk studio secret weapons and walk through a session with Björk and Tom Jones’ Grammy-winning mastering engineer.

Through his work as an engineer and author, Mike Skeet inspired enthusiasts to build their own equipment and make better recordings.

These files accompany the Mike Skeet obituary in the March 2016 issue of SOS.

If you’re a gig–goer, you might have noticed an unpleasant trend in recent years...

This month: Grace • Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Trust Choir • Jamie Lawson • Elvis Presley & The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra • Classic Mix: The Prodigy ‘Breathe’ (1997)

Choosing the right publisher can make a huge difference to a composer’s career. But is there any choice left?

David Bowie will rightly be remembered for his art — but his business sense was equally impressive.

January's annual NAMM exhibition provided the perfect opportunity to present the SOS Awards, which celebrate the products that you, the SOS readers, have deemed most worthy of these prestigious accolades.

Most of the independent studios that date back to the founding era of our industry were started by single entrepreneurs....