Signal Processors

If you want to capture the sound of your boutique valve amp for recording but can't turn it up loud, you need a power soak... and speaker emulation... and mic emulation... SPL's Transducer does it all.

Behringer offer highly affordable excitement in the shape of two new sub-£100 rack processors.

Summit Audio's high-end designs are known for their quality and longevity — so is their new compressor a classic in the making?

The latest in Roland's pioneering VG range could qualify as the best guitar synth ever made.

Beneath this innocent exterior lies a growling analogue beast that can help you create some truly unique sounds...

Fishman's acclaimed process for improving the sound of acoustic guitar pickups is now available in pedal format — and with 24-bit converters and 32-bit internal processing, this is a distinctly superior-sounding Aura.

The X-Rack system makes SSL's large console technology much more accessible - so much so that we were reluctant to send it back!

This unusual compressor was specifically designed to process complex material, with dedicated bus-compression applications in mind.

Second-hand tape recorders are cheap and can provide uniquely warm, organic delay effects. Best of all, its a piece of cake to integrate them into a digital mixing setup. We tell you how...

I've never known what the difference is between a passive EQ and an active one. Could you explain?

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We take another look at the impressive Portico range, focusing on a compressor-limiter and a unique tape-emulation processor.

Combining the classic Neve sound with a software recall facility, this EQ offers the best of both worlds.

If you want other people to hear your surround mixes, you'll need to encode them into a consumer format. Pro Tools users have a choice of software for this purpose. Which should you choose?

I know they are all dynamics processors, but what's the difference between a levelling amplifier, a limiter and a...

API remind us that the best analogue gear is still that bit more classy than some digital recreations...

I have been recording music for quite a few years now, but I always get the same problem when I listen back to my mixes:...

Mastering engineers are notoriously fussy about EQ, and until now, plug-in manufacturers have struggled to compete with the best hardware designs. Can Algorithmix's Red and Blue change hearts and minds?

There are now quite a few plug-ins on the market that have the ability to split audio into hundreds or thousands of bands and treat them separately, paving the way for a variety of weird and wonderful effects. Are you brave enough to enter the frequency zone?

We take our first look at the excellent new Portico range by Rupert Neve Designs - and they don't disappoint.

If you've ever fancied creating your own VST plug-in synths and effects, Outsim's slick development tool might just have made the process that bit easier for PC users.

Auto-Tune has been the industry standard pitch-correction tool for many years, and version 5 introduces many new features, but it faces its strongest competition yet from the new plug-in version of Celemony's Melodyne. So which one should you buy?