The M5000 was TC's flagship Digital Audio Mainframe, a modular, software-upgradable processing platform that became a studio benchmark for reverb in the 90s and never really left. Engineers still rank...

The Universal Audio Apollo Twin is the desktop interface that put genuine UAD plug-in processing on every studio desk: gorgeous Unison preamps, pristine AD/DA conversion and the ability to track...

A genuinely rare piece of British studio history. The Chilton M10/2 Mk6 was the final and most refined version of Chilton's celebrated Quiet Mixer series, a 10-input, 2-output portable console...

Released in the early 1970s, the TEAC AX-300 is a 6:4 analog mixer built for the golden age of home multitrack. Conceived as the mixing companion to TEAC's legendary 4-channel...

Before digital reverb took over, the MICMIX Master Room was the spring reverb serious studios reached for: a big, lush, three-dimensional spring sound far richer than the tanks built into...

The 160S is dbx founder David Blackmer's high-end reimagining of his own legendary 160 VCA compressor, hand-built in the boutique Blue Series. A true-stereo (or dual-mono) VCA compressor with that...

Hand-built in England by Thermionic Culture, The Phoenix is a pure-valve stereo compressor beloved for the way it glues a mix together with warmth and weight rather than squashing it....

Before Eventide made pitch-shifting respectable and digital FX racks took over studios, MXR quietly unleashed the 129 Pitch Transposer: a gritty, unpredictable, slightly drunk box of pitch-warping chaos. It was...

The Joemeek SC4 brings the cult British photo-optical compression sound to the stereo bus: smooth, vibey gain reduction that flatters mixes, drums and vocals with character rather than clinical control.The...

Vintage tape at its most beautiful. The Akai M-7 is an early-to-mid 1960s tube reel-to-reel, a four-track, four-speed semi-professional deck with separate valve amplifiers for each channel, twin glowing VU...

The 1604-VLZ Pro is the mixer that earned Mackie its reputation: sixteen channels of clean, high-headroom analog with the famous XDR mic preamps, flexible four-bus routing, musical 3-band EQ and...

FATSO stands for Full Analog Tape Simulator and Optimizer, which is a lot of acronym for a box whose actual job is making digital recordings sound like they went through...

Before everyone had a thousand soft-samplers in a laptop, you had a rack, a floppy disk, and twelve glorious bits. The Akai S950 is the box that chopped the breaks...

Steinberg and Yamaha's UR28M is a do-it-all desktop audio interface that quietly punches above its weight: pristine D-PRE mic preamps, rock-solid drivers, and, crucially, a proper hardware monitor controller with...

The QuadraVerb Plus runs four effects at once, reverb, delay, pitch and EQ, in glorious 20kHz bandwidth, the upgraded version of the multi-effects box that lived in every 90s rack....

The CA-1000 II is peak 1970s Yamaha: a Natural Sound integrated amplifier from the golden era of Japanese hi-fi, and the amp half the industry spent the next decade imitating....

No more mystery box: this is the Yamaha B-5, a 240-watt-per-channel Natural Sound power amplifier and one of the most serious separates Yamaha built in the era. Released in 1979...

If a record sounds good on NS-10s, it sounds good everywhere, which is why these white-coned Yamahas ended up on the meter bridge of nearly every serious studio on earth....

The ART Pro VLA II is the secret-weapon comp for engineers who want LA-style optical squish without the boutique price. Two channels of opto compression with a tube gain stage,...

In 1976 David Blackmer built the first solid-state VCA compressor and changed recording forever. The 160 is brutally simple, three knobs and a big switchable VU, but it does one...

Millennia's Origin is what happens when a boutique builder refuses to compromise. One 2U chassis hides two complete signal paths, one all-tube, one all-discrete solid state, switchable at the touch...

Ask a roomful of mix engineers about a do-anything stereo compressor and Elysia's Xpressor keeps coming up. This is a discrete Class-A stereo compressor built in Germany to mastering-grade standards,...

A heavyweight from the golden era of Japanese hi-fi. The Yamaha B-4 is a Natural Sound stereo power amplifier from 1978, built as two symmetrical mono amplifiers in one 21kg...

Tune your system by eye and ear. The Yamaha EQ-630 is a Natural Sound stereo graphic equalizer from 1989, and a properly sophisticated one: ten bands per channel with fully...