Editors Blog
The Man From Atomic City
Recording's Associate Editor, Mike Metlay, Ph.D. (Nuclear Physics -- no, really!), shoots his virtual mouth off about all things musical. Be amazed, be amused, be edified.
Recent Posts
The Nashville Recording Workshop 2013
May 16, 2013
I just got back from Nashville, where I got to participate in the fourth annual Nashville Recording Workshop + Expo, sponsored by the AES Nashville Section. It's a two-...Read More
Here Comes The KMI QuNexus!
May 10, 2013
And just when I thought I was all done getting my hands on cool new gear to show around at the AES Nashville Recording Workshop & Expo (and review for future issues), a package arrived today with the new QuNexus keyboard from Keith McMillen ...Read More
The CME Xkey Arrives
May 9, 2013
The new Xkey just arrived from CME, and you can expect a review soon. I will be demoing it at the Read More
How Old Is Too Old?
March 28, 2013
Just a quick thought: how old is too old when you're talking about a computer for doing music?
I recently got a fact check back from a manufacturer whose plug-in I'd just reviewed. It was a favorable review overall, but I noted that this particular plug-in ate a fair amount of CPU load on my laptop test machine, a...Read More
Scratching the Surface (Part 2)
March 12, 2013
Some time has passed since my initial trials with the Microsoft Surface Pro with Windows 8, and I was intrigued enough to ask Microsoft if they could spare one for some tests. (They politely told me to get in line. Meh.) But that particular computer aside, two things have led me to further suspect that finally there's an area where Microsoft may have stolen a ...Read More
The NAMM Show Report, And After
February 28, 2013
We are wrapping up production of our April issue, which contains 10 pages of NAMM reportage -- lots of cool products, lots of cool pictures. A really lengthy, in-depth article that takes a long time to put together. (Which is the closest thing you'll get to an apology from me for not having blogged yet this week.) As I was looking it over, I thought about the ...Read More
Scratching the Surface (Part 1)
February 20, 2013
For the past several weeks, my friend and musical colleague (and frequent RECORDING contributor) Darwin Grosse has been chatting with me off and on about future trends in the computer experience, and how they might relate to music making. One topic that's come up a lot is Microsoft's new Surface pad computer; not the feature-crippled one that runs Windows RT (...Read More
When is Replaceable Not Really Any More?
February 13, 2013
I have had a couple of people call me out on my editorial in this month's (March 2013) Fade Out, "The Mac As Disposable Appliance", where there was a factual error. I stated that the new Retina MacBook Pro had a Solid State Drive that couldn't be replaced; this is not true, it's actually a reasonably straightforward process that only involves two tools you'll ...Read More
Thunderbolt From The Blue
August 4, 2011
Solutions to problems are easy to find,
The Problem's a real contribution.
What's really a challenge to wring from your mind
Is a problem to fit a solution.
--Piet HeinRead More
Welcome to NAMM: Day 4
January 17, 2011
NAMM is over and I'm home at last. Here are some cool items I saw in my final day on the show floor.
Welcome to NAMM: Day 3
January 15, 2011
The third day of NAMM is behind us, and here are some more highlights from the show floor.
Zildjian has been in the cymbal business for centuries and for 14 generations; the grandchild of the current owners of the firm, the 16th generation, gives her name to gen16, Zildjian's new line of digital cymbal products. There's a high-quality sound library ...Read More
Welcome to NAMM: Day 2
January 14, 2011
This blog entry is going up a little late. Blame the good folks at sE Electronics, who held a banquet in honor of the recently passed Mitchell Carey last night. I raised a glass to Mitch's memory in the company of many of his friends instead of sitting and writing my blog. Sue me.
Traffic seems to be up from last year; everyone is thrilled with the...Read More
Welcome to NAMM: Day 1
January 13, 2011
Hello from sunny Anaheim, where the 2011 NAMM Show is in full swing. The economy's slow trend toward recovery is visible everywhere, with formerly more cautious companies coming out with new products and ideas of all kinds. We'll bring you a full report on the show in our March issue (in subscribers' mailboxes in early February), but in the meantime I plan to ...Read More
2C Audio Breeze and the Lean Reverb Initiative
December 13, 2010
AES 2010: Day Three and final thoughts
November 8, 2010
Sorry for the delay on this last AES entry, folks. The show closed a bit less than 24 hours ago, and from the closing bell I've been running: breaking down our booth, getting out of the Moscone Center, and making my way home in one piece. I finally have a few moments for some final shout-outs and a comment or two about the show in general.
AES 2010: Day Two
November 7, 2010
Another late night, another fascinating day at the AES Convention. Check out Lorenz Rychner's blog for today, to see pictures and hear about some of the cool items we've seen. Here are some of the things I got to see, again in no particular order.
As Lorenz has mentioned, we were treated to a pre-show look at Korg...Read More
AES 2010: Day One
November 6, 2010
It's well after midnight as I type this, at the end of a very long and successful day at AES 2010. Check out Lorenz Rychner's blog entry for today; he roamed the show with a camera and caught a lot of cool stuff. For my part, I spent almost the whole day meeting with manufacturers and being introduced to new products that will be appearing in our show report i...Read More
AES 2010: Opening salvos
November 4, 2010
Hi, gang. Here I am in San Francisco, one of my favorite cities in the world, and I won't get to see much of it because I'll be busy working at AES. The Convention starts tomorrow morning, and I'll try to blog once a day with the items I found really cool. But there were two big product announcements that took place before the show, and I thought I'd start off...Read More
I And Thou, sorta
October 26, 2010
Martin Buber, the philosopher, once wrote (if I may paraphrase roughly), "Only that within you that is me can hear what I am saying." That seems like kind of a high-flown idea to put in a blog about music recording technology, but as this magazine's most prolific reviewer, it's an idea that is very much on my mind when I do reviews... and it's something that y...Read More
Just Because You Can Plug It In...
October 18, 2010
...doesn't mean it will work the way you want it to.
On a recent trip to China, I went to a local store and shelled out a few yuan for a power strip that would let me plug my spare laptop into the wall. The laptop's power supply was autoranging, so it could automatically work with the power provided in China, but ...Read More
The Pro Tools Pathway Gets Two More Steps
October 7, 2010
Yesterday, Avid announced the imminent release of Pro Tools | HD Native. Boiling down the press release to a few key ideas and reflecting on a very nice phone chat I had with Mark Williams of Avid (hi Mark!), here are the essentials of what you need to know about it.
Up until now, there's been a very strict dividi...Read More
Staying Current (Painful As It May Seem)
July 17, 2010
I suppose I should be grateful to the flabby idiot who tooled around in his Corvette trying to impress girls for about forty thousand too many miles
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