Tag: gear

sE Electronics DM1 Dynamite | Sound on Sound

sE Electronics DM1 Dynamite |:

The sE Electronics DM1 provides a similar functionality to many other microphone gain boosters, such as the Cloud Microphones Cloudlifter and the Triton Audio FetHead — it acts as a local in-line gain-booster for weak microphone signals, such as from passive ribbon mics and some moving-coil dynamics. It is built into a metal tube just under 100mm in length so is very compact. We were very lucky to get this review underway, actually, as this tube comes packed inside a dummy stick of dynamite, complete with fuse — Paul brought it back from the AES show in his hold luggage, and when back in the UK he found a note to say the bag had been searched by US customs; thankfully they decided his bag wasn’t suspicious enough to warrant a controlled explosion!

I have a Cloudlifter for adding clean gain to my “low output” microphones. I won it at the Potluck Audio conference a bunch of years ago. I like it. The folks I have recommended it to like it.

There are other alternatives. This is a new one at a decent price. I am a fan of sE Electronics microphones (think VooDoo VR2 active ribbon….yeah).

Pulse Techniques EQP-1A | Sound on Sound

Pulse Techniques EQP-1A |:

As a standard facility of most mixing consoles and DAWs, we all tend to take EQ for granted, even though there are many different types of equaliser with varying levels of sophistication and application. While the true origins of the first audio equaliser are shrouded in the mists of time, two names stand out for me as pioneers of audio equalisation: Peter Baxandall from the UK, and the American, Eugene Shenk. Baxandall was an electronics engineer (and friend of our esteemed Editor In Chief) who came up with a very elegant circuit for an active bass and treble equaliser. He published his design, royalty-free, in 1952 and it has subsequently been employed almost universally in mixing consoles and hi-fi amplifiers, bearing his name as the Baxandall equaliser or ‘tone control’. Amazingly, at around the same time in America, Gene Shenk developed a passive design which has become the legendary studio equaliser — the PulTec EQP-1.

The Pultec is fabled. I use my emulation all the time. This review is an excellent guide to what it is and why it works.