Radial Engineering Firefly Tube Direct Box By Rob Tavaglione It seems like there's a lot of cool DI boxes around these days, often sporting tubes and advanced features. Leave it to British Columbia-based Radial Engineering—makers of some wildly popular direct-injection and inter-connecting boxes—to add its Firefly to the trend. And yes—the Firefly has a tube plus numerous other advanced features, most obviously a sporty, memorable handle that kind of looks like a lightning bug's wing. More »
No subscription to Pro Audio Review? Get on the inside track with the best peer-to-peer pro reviews in the audio production biz: visit http://www.mypsnmag.com now!
Today's Blog
In-Ear Monitors Vs. Things In Your Ears By Erica Basnicki For years I have regretted my pierced tragus. The tragus is that little flap of skin that covers the opening in to your ear canal. The actual piercing is remarkably painless (not a lot of nerve endings there).
Trying to fit in-ear monitors or earbud-type headphones around the ring? Impossible–and very painful. An earbud never stays in place for long so I can either jam it back in place every few seconds, live with over-ear headphone sweat (yum), or accept the poor stereo imaging from having one headphone further away from my ear than the other.
Then, it happened. On an otherwise ordinary day at Prolight + Sound, Frankfurt, some benevolent (and body-modification sympathetic) deity guided me to the Ultimate Ears booth. There was magic happening there. Sorcerers were waving powerful wands inside people's ears, capturing exact 3D models of every fold of skin and precise measurements of ear canals. More »
The Battle To Capture Battles By Clive Young Battles has always been an interesting band, staking out a musical space somewhere between the conformity of modern electronic loop-based music and the improvisational nature of experimental, freeform rock. The trio mines the tension between musical forms, but recording that push-and-pull so that it maintains an organic truth isn't a simple process—and that battle is captured in the short documentary, Battles: The Art of Repetition.
Following the band as it records a new album for Warp Records—La Di Da Di, due out September 18, 2015—the flick kicks off with a mix of live footage from Germany's Immergut Festival and pre-studio rehearsals in Battles' hometown of New York City. Noting that the cost to record in Manhattan for a few days can net the group a three-week lockout elsewhere, it's not long before the group heads off to Machines with Magnets Studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. More »