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 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...
Pro monitoring control for your desktop, and a project-studio staple. The PreSonus Monitor Station V2 lets you switch instantly between up to four stereo sources and three sets of monitor...
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...
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...
Roland's 12-bit rack sampler from the late 80s. The S-330 packs the same characterful converters as its keyboard siblings into a tidy 1U box, complete with that gritty, slightly lo-fi...
The Maschine MK3 is Native Instruments' flagship groove production system: 16 velocity-sensitive pads, two crisp colour screens, a big browse-and-tweak encoder and deep integration with a massive sound library. Finger-drum,...
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...
The Sony VT-M5 is the kind of gadget you would expect in a Cold War surveillance van or on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Billed as an Audioscope...
The bigger brother of the S-330 and Roland's flagship rack sampler of the era: more voices, more memory, more outputs, and the same lovably gritty 12-bit Roland conversion. With a...
The Behringer Ultra-Curve Pro (DSP8024) is the swiss-army processor that has lived in countless racks: a 31-band digital graphic EQ, real-time analyzer, feedback destroyer, dynamics and more, all with a...
Akai's late-90s reinvention of the sampler: a big graphical screen, a computer-style workflow, and that clean 16-bit Akai character. This particular unit is loaded to the gills, RAM maxed at...
Victor (JVC's home-market brand) made some of the prettiest hi-fi gear of the era, and the SEA-60 is exhibit A: a stereo graphic equaliser with a mesmerising blue spectrum-analyser display...
The Victor/JVC SEA-80 is one of the prettiest pieces of vintage hi-fi you can put in a rack: a 10-band-per-channel stereo graphic equalizer from 1979 with a built-in, glowing fluorescent...
The Marantz 2130 is one of the most beautiful tuners ever made: a quartz-locked FM/AM stereo tuner with Marantz's mesmerising oscilloscope display showing signal strength, multipath and tuning, all wrapped...
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...
When you need to track a whole band at once without remortgaging, the Tascam US-1641 is the quiet hero: sixteen inputs in, four out, eight mic preamps with phantom, all...
In 1974 Sony looked at the Nagra, the Swiss reporter's recorder that cost as much as a small car, and built its own for half the money. The TC-510-2 is...
Do not let the 25 keys fool you. The Subsequent 25 packs the full-fat Moog ladder filter, three oscillators and a re-tuned multidrive circuit into Moog's most compact keyboard synth,...
The Alesis MultiMix 12R folds a full twelve-channel mixer into a rack: mic preamps, EQ, aux sends and a metered master section, all standing upright to save your desk space....
The Yamaha M-80 is a serious natural-sound stereo power amplifier: plenty of clean watts, a striking black fascia with glowing level meters, and that composed, effortless Yamaha delivery. Built to...
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,...
