If you could own one stereo bus compressor for the rest of your life, a frightening number of top engineers would name the Neve 33609. Derived from the legendary 2254...

Every studio eventually has too many signals and not enough faders. The Fostex 2016 is the fix: a compact rack line mixer that quietly sums your stray synths, drum machines...

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...

Orban built its name on broadcast and studio processing, and the 672A is a workhorse parametric EQ that does precise, musical tone-shaping the cheap stuff cannot touch. Each unit gives...

Out of Austin, Texas came a graphic EQ that quietly became the studio standard while flashier rivals grabbed the magazine covers. The White Instruments 4400 skips the fragile faders and...

Everyone knows Sansui for the silver-faced receivers. Almost nobody knows they spent the early sixties building tube gear, and the MX-10 is the good one: a six-input valve mixing preamp...

The S1100EX is Akai's expansion unit for the legendary S1100 sampler. Linked to the host over MIDI and SCSI, it adds a second full set of voices and outputs, so...

The Nakamichi 630 is a rare tuner-preamplifier from Nakamichi's celebrated era: superb engineering, an understated black fascia and the clean, musical sound the brand is famous for.A handsome and unusual...

The Focusrite Liquid Channel is what happens when a British console legend decides to bottle every classic preamp and compressor ever made and pour them into one 2U box. Using...

The Warm Audio WA76 is a faithful, fully-discrete take on the legendary 1176 FET compressor, the one that has slammed drums, vocals and bass on countless hit records. Lightning-fast attack,...

The MOTU 1296 adds twelve channels of high-quality 96kHz, 24-bit analog input and output to MOTU's PCI-424 core system. Clean converters, balanced TRS throughout and rock-solid performance.A useful I/O expander...

The TEAC AN-300 is the noise reduction companion to TEAC's 1970s multitrack system, and this one comes from the same set as our TEAC AX-300 mixers. Built to tame tape...

Built at the peak of the 1970s "receiver wars", the Sansui AU-11000 was the company's no-compromise flagship integrated, and it shows. 110 watts a side, dual fully-independent channels from power...

Don't let the modest price fool you, the 18Xs MkII is a seriously good single-channel front end. A transformer-coupled, Class-A microphone preamp with up to 65dB of gain, a high-impedance...

The Auratone 5C is the legendary little mixcube that engineers from Motown onward used to check that a mix translates: full-range, single-driver, brutally honest. If it sounds good on an...

Don't let the cartoon fat man fool you: the HHB Radius 3 is a genuine valve stereo compressor with a glowing VU and a brilliantly simple program-based front end. Pick...

The Quad 34 is the elegant preamplifier at the heart of Quad's celebrated 1980s system. Compact, beautifully made and famously musical, it offers disc, radio and tape inputs, tilt and...

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,...

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....

A genuine rarity. The REVAC NM-88 is a professional 8-channel microphone preamplifier from Japan's pro-audio world, the kind of obscure, well-built workhorse that surfaces only occasionally on Japanese auction sites...

The Sound Technology 1500A is proper pro-audio test gear, built to measure and align tape machines back when tape was king. Wow and flutter, speed, distortion, frequency response, it does...

The StudioComm is a purpose-built monitor controller from Studio Technologies: clean, transparent level control, source and speaker switching and talkback, all in a tidy desktop console. The unglamorous-but-essential brain that...

Yes, the name is ridiculous. Get past it, because the Little Phatty is the real deal: a 100% analog, two-oscillator monosynth built around the genuine Moog ladder filter, and the...