Industry Talk

SOS talks to a British designer who thinks audio in the 21st century is still best served by tube.

If you've never heard top-quality recording gear with your own ears, what reference do you have when assessing mid-price and budget gear?

Chinese manufacturing has brought the price of microphones down to levels unthinkable a few years ago. But does the quality suffer accordingly? SOS visited one of the biggest mic companies in China to find out...

The process of clearing samples can be financially crippling, as well as causing havoc with release schedules. Rinse Productions specialise in helping producers and labels by recreating problematic samples to order.

Editor In Chief Paul White explains why hardware is one way of reducing piracy in the music software industry.

Music industry sources suggest that soon all CDs will have built-in copy protection, and plans are underway to fit PCs with a chip that will police audio use. Will this protect creative rights, or become a barrier to creativity?

Editor In Chief Paul White ponders a future full of virtual pop stars...

Production music will never be glamorous, but it can be very lucrative. As head of music production at one of the UK's largest libraries, Tim Geraghty is in the perfect position to offer advice to SOS readers with an eye on this market.

Unquestionably the best-known name in synth design, in 2003 Bob Moog was still creating innovative electronic instruments. With the new Voyager synth about to hit the shops and the rights to use his own name restored, his star seems to be on the rise once again. SOS chats to this founding father...

Propellerhead, makers of the unique Reason software studio, have come from nowhere to award-winning developer status in just eight years. We catch up with one of the key men behind this small but influential Swedish company.

Tim Ryan, founder of Midiman (now better known as M-Audio) has successfully changed his company from a manufacturer of affordable sync boxes for MIDI sequencers into the fastest-growing American music-technology outfit. We find out where he's taking them next.

Despite rumours that Apple was on the lookout for a major audio company, Apple's buyout of German developers Emagic took us all by surprise...

Roger Linn's name may be forever associated with the birth of the first serious, sample-based drum machine in 1979, but now, after years away from instrument design, he's back with a new guitar-oriented product offering rhythmic filter effects.

Is Surround Sound and the DVD-Audio format all a plot to 'take the means of production away from the workers'?

The current extent of software piracy poses a serious threat to the economical stability of the software companies on whom we rely...

BeOS is arguably the most promising independent multimedia OS of recent years - but, sadly, innovation and quality have not been enough to guarantee its future...

For years, laptops have been the poor relations of desktop computers in terms of power and facilities, yet have remained expensive in comparison to their studio-bound brethren. But things are changing...

The future looks bright for those musicians who want to use desktop video software to produce their own promotional videos. Dave Shapton explains why.

As a musician, you may well have heard of Dolby A, B and C - but Dolby E? Dave Shapton introduces the format and speculates about its possible implications for music recording.

It could be argued that technology hasn't encroached as much on the average gig as it has on the typical project studio. Dave Shapton would like to change all that...

As technological progress continues to make digital storage devices bigger, RAM cheaper, and processing faster, hitherto outlandish ideas come closer to being realistic possibilities. This month, Dave Shapton thinks about teaching his computer to Name That Tune...