There is no getting around the fact that Christmas is coming and with it, comes the annual dilemma of what to buy for the audio engineer for whom most people have no idea what to get us, or the thing that we really want costs well over three grand (or probably more). To help with this dilemma, we have drawn up a list of 5 Christmas gifts, each under £50 that most audio people will appreciate.
Pop Shield / Filter
You can have the most expensive or rare vintage mic but any vocal or voice recording can be ruined by plosives. Hence we all use a pop screen, shield or filter. The Studiospares RED230 High-Quality Tri-Screen Pop Shield / Filter is available from the UK reselling legends Studio Spares for just £16.99 UK pounds. Make that £3000 super mic sound as is was supposed to.
Clip-On Tuner
The Peterson StroboClip HD is about as good as it gets when it comes to professional clip-on tuners. StroboClip HD features the same tenth-of-a-cent accuracy as all Peterson Strobe Tuners and comes fully loaded with a bright high-definition screen, over 50 Sweetened tunings and alternate temperaments to cover a vast array of string and wind instruments. The soft rubber-lined jaws protect the instrument's finish while offering a firm grip for maximum signal tracking.
The Peterson StroboClip is available online for around £48 UK Pounds.
A High-Quality Instrument Cable
Let’s not head down the rabbit hole of which cable sounds best just yet but hopefully we can all agree that the quality of your instrument cables really does matter and using something that came free in packets of breakfast cereal is really not very studio friendly. The Monster Cable ROCK 21A is a 6.4m guitar or instrument cable featuring gold-plated 1/4 inch jacks (right angle or straight) with a three-wire structure and copper-braided shield. Give you big guitar sound a chance with a quality cable. Monster Rock cables are available from around £47 from the Monster Cables on-line store.
Portable Hard Drive
“I have too many hard-drives,” said no-one ever. The OWC Express drive is small, highly portable and available in USB 2.0 and 3.0 variations. But the best things is that 1TB of storage can cost as little as £39 UK pounds. For more info on the OWC Express drives check out the OWC shopping pages. Features include:
Pocket-sized USB bus powered ventilated enclosure
Perfect for 2.5" SATA drives up to 9.5mm tall
Available with USB 3.1 Gen 1 or USB 2.0 interface in Silver, Black, or White
Up to 2 Year OWC Limited Warranty1
Closed-Back Headphones
We have said it many times but a great headphone mix can make a session for an artist and a poor mix can destroy any chance you as an engineer have of capturing that perfect take. It all starts with the headphones. The Audio Technica ATH M20X closed-back studio headphones are far from the most expensive on the market but they are comfortable, can take very high volume levels and they sound great. James has had 5 pairs of ATH M20 headphones in his studio for over 5 years and they are all “Trumpet player” proof.
The Audio Technica ATH M20X are available from Studio Spares for £42 UK pounds including taxes.
Please Add Your Suggestions
We hope you have found our audio engineers gift guide useful and if you find any bargains either in-store or on-line please do add them in the comments section below.