Sam Rosenthal, founder of Projekt Records and the gothic/ethereal band, black tape for a blue girl, has been making music for over 20 years. He has released 13 full-length albums and CDs, numerous EPs and singles and has been involved in the production and mastering of many others. The Projekt label has been called home by recording artists including Steve Roach, Lycia, Love Spirals Downwards, Android Lust, Voltaire, the above-mentioned black tape for a blue girl and Rosenthal's new ambient project, As Lonely As Dave Bowman. Gearwire spoke to Rosenthal about the sound boards he has used over the years.

"I started out recording with two cassette decks running through a radio shack mixer," says Rosenthal. "Cassette to mixer and synth then back to cassette. Each pass added a layer of music and hiss, and you could never go back and change things. That mixer was for DJs, so it offered nothing. Then in 1986 I borrowed the college's Fostex Portastudio, so the whole "board" was built right in."

Rosenthal's next move was to a Teac 80-8 analog 8 track and a Tapco board.

"I'm sure it was top-notch once upon a time, but this was in the mid-80s, so they both had seen a lot of use. Eventually the faders and pots on the board got so dirty and scratchy that I had to toss it," says Rosenthal. "I had ruined too many mixes with a noisy fader in the last 20 seconds of a fade-out. I moved up to a Mackie 24 channel board, which worked well for many years with the 8-track."

A skylight leaked onto the board frying channel 13 but Rosenthal kept using the Mackie even after switching to digital.

"When I was mixing my 2004 album, Halo Star, I really began to notice the limitations. The Mackie sounded too crispy with the all-digital signals (I was still mixing through the board, at that point), so I got the Behringer," says Rosenthal. "And even though they are much less expensive boards, it had a warmer and more pleasant sound."

The Behringer Rosenthal uses is the Behringer Eurorack MX324ZX.

"These days I think the board is just a 'router' really, since all the mixing is done within the computer, with the equivalent of automation." says Rosenthal.

For recording Rosenthal eventually switched from the Teac 80-8 to Sonic Foundry's Vegas 5.0 on Windows XP. Rosenthal says he is "all Mac" in the rest of his life but makes a concession to the PC so he can use Vegas as well as CD Architect.

"Steve Roach, who is a friend and artist on my Projekt label, gave me a demonstration of Vegas one day in 2001 and I was hooked," says Rosenthal. "That was when I was still tormenting myself with an analog ½ inch 8-Track,. Seeing the possibility of infinite tracks, I knew the time had come to get out of the stone age."