Companies and Products I Would Love To See Develop For The 500 Series

After half way filling up my new API lunchbox, I got to thinking of which companies and products I would love to see develop for the 500 series. So here is a wish list of 5 of those companies and products.

1. Summit Audio - The TLA100 is one of my favorite vocal compressors. And I’ve always wanted to use Summit EQ’s (I recently got the new Softube Summit Grand Channel). If Summit could find a way to shrink their products into the 500 series you can put me down for one of each. Summit is known for their tube gear so this would be quite a challenge.
2. Tube-tech CL 1B - Oh the classic blue beast. Tubetech opticalness in 500 series. One word. Yes! Tube-tech has their own proprietary modules similar to the 500 series, but sadly its not 500 series.
3. Empirical Labs 500 series pre - The mike-e is one of my favorite vocal pre’s and channels strips. If Dave Derr where to make a 500 series pre with say the saturation from mike-e I’d be on it like LED’s on all the other Empirical Labs gear.
4. Dave Hill Designs - Dave Hill gave me the most impressive demo at Gearfest this year at Sweetwater. If Dave was to make anything 500 series no doubt it would be great. For those who don’t know Dave Hill he is more known as the mastermind behind the Cranesong gear.
5. Solid State Logic - Because SSL makes the X-rack,modules, their own proprietary smaller modules, I doubt we’ll ever see them design for the 500 series. In my opinion the 500 series is way more popular than the X-rack stuff. I think SSL could make a killing with the 500 series format, especially if they did their EQ.

These are of course dreams but the Empirical Labs pre I can see really becoming a reality. What companies or products do you want to see in the 500 series?

Lindell Audio new 500 series products to retail at $299!

I was browsing on Alto music’s site and came across the new 500 series from Lindell Audio and saw the price was $299. My first impression was Alto screwed up the price listing. There is no way a mic pre with a pultec style eq, FET compressor, and a pultec eq can be $299 each in a 500 series. So to confirm this wasn’t an early April Fool’s joke I emailed Lindell Audio asking if this was the correct pricing and received this reply.

“Yes it’s very true, we are being very aggressive with our pricing. $299 is the price. We expect to ship in late July.”

So there you have it, For well under a grand you can get three 500 series modules for the price of what you normally pay for one. So this makes me wonder. If Lindell Audio can make aggressively priced 500 series, why can’t anyone else? I often notice the price of the smaller 500 series products are not far from the rack versions of the same unit. My audio friends close to me know I have been contemplating getting a API lunchbox and some 500 series pieces for a while. With these products from Lindell Audio I am very tempted to buy all three. Products like empirical labs docderr, Chandler Little Devil Pre, and Inward Connections Brute makes me step closer to the 500 series, but the Lindell Audio 500 series makes me take a huge step.  


For more info visit http://www.lindellaudio.se/

Newer Doesn't Always Mean Better

In the audio world, newer doesn't always mean better, though in most cases it does. In electronic products such as smartphones, TV's, video game consoles, and computers, are contanstly being replaced by newer models with more impressive specs and performance. In audio however, this isn't the case. Lets take the Empirical Labs Distressor for example. The Distressor had its 15th year old birthday last year. The Avalon 737 channel strip is also more than a decade old. The RME Fireface series is coming up on a decade. The Lynx Aurora converters are now over 5 years old. Yet these products are still popular and selling well today. If you notice, most of the new gear today is made to sound like the old gear of the past. The Vintech series is made to recreate the classic Neve sound, and the Daking mic pre and eq is modeled after the Trident console. I'm not saying go buy the oldest gear you can afford, but I am saying if your looking at gear and one was built in 07, and one 05, don't expect the one built in 07 to sound better because its "newer". 


Because audio gear made over a decade ago can still be relevant today is actually a good thing. I don't think anyone will reinvent the microphone anytime soon. What I mean by this is you have condenser, ribbon, and dynamic mics. Will there be an awesome new technology to come out that will replace these types of mics making them obsolete? Not likely. So its a good thing because the same mic, mic pre, eq, and compressor you use today will still be able to function 20 years from now. This means you can buy gear and use it for the rest of your career. How many other industries can say that? Another good thing is that after a decade of production there are plenty of used ones available for cheaper. The bad thing about old gear still being relevant is that prices aren't likely to drop because of a products age, which makes sense. It something has been selling well for over a decade then why drop the price? If anything prices go up. An engineer I know was telling me the other day how his friend bought a tubetech CL1B for around $1800 brand new years ago. Now the price is almost doubled at $3500. So don't let the age of a product discourage you from purchasing it. (Unless its truly vintage and may be in need of constant repair.) Who knows, that gear you may end up buying that's a few years old may end up being a classic. Then you can be the one saying you bought it at lower price 10 years later when the price is doubled.

Empirical Labs Mike-e Review

So I’ve had my Mike-e for about 5 months now and I’m ready to write a review. To start, when the mike-e says its a mic pre amp with new tricks, its not lying. This has been my go to pre since first using it, defeating my previous favorite pre, the Avalon 737. First off, when I got my mike-e hooked up for the first time I could not get the phantom power to work. After extensive troubleshooting I contacted Empirical Labs. Dave Derr quickly responded and sent me a new mike-e. When I got the new mike-e, I couldn’t get phantom power to work either. WTF! Took to it to another studio and phantom power worked fine. At this point I’m going crazy trying to figure out why I can't get phantom to work. Well Dave ends up sending me an email telling me to make sure I don’t have the mic and line input connected at the same time. Well sure enough I did. So basically if you have a mic and line input connected at the same time it will cancel out the phantom power. This is no problem for me because I just mix in my studio, I don’t record, so I leave the line input connected. For a recording studio this could be tricky since both can’t be connected at the same time. The mike-e to me is parts of all empirical labs products rolled into one, excluding the lil freQ. You get a very clean mic pre with saturation borrowed from the fatso, and a compressor borrowed from the famous distressor. In tracking hip-hop vocals I found the mike-e to sound bigger than the Avalon 737, way bigger than my Joemeek TwinQ, and a tad bigger then Great River 500 series pre. It makes vocals sound huge with the comp/sat section. Between hitting the mic pre hard and really driving the saturation circuit, you can get a lot of different tones from this channel strip. I’ve been running lead vocals for almost every mix I do through it with great results. It really brings the vocal forward and in your face in a mix. I also tracked bass with it through the DI adding a little saturation and compression. The bass player was very pleased with the sound. One of my favorite features about the mike-e is that when you power it off it saves your setting. So lets say you or your assistant forgot to fill out the recall sheet for the session, or you want to run the signal through the same setting you recorded it with when its time to mix. Well when you power it back it on all your setting that are digital like attack, release, etc, will be maintained. Pretty cool! Since I thought I had a bad unit and ELI sent me another, for a few weeks I had 2 mike-e in my possession. What to do with two mike-e’s? Put them on mix buss of course! I normally use a chameleon labs 7720 on mix buss. I used the mike-e’s with its slowest attack and fastest release will driving the saturation hitting the toasty light on the peaks with no more than 3db gain reduction. I don’t know how much was the mike-e and how much was my mixing skills but having it on mix buss gave me what I think is one of my top 3 mixes ever. I love the distressor on drum buss so its not surprising that two mike-e’s on drum buss worked very well. The mike-e has a wet/dry knob for parallel compression on the unit. No need to blend in your parallel compression with your DAW fader. As I said before, this is now my go to pre for tracking vocals. Empirical Labs customer support was great. I hated to send back the second unit but I didn’t have an extra $1600 laying around in my account. But after a few more purchases I will definitely be picking up a second mike-e. There is a insert mod available and a transformer output mod will be available soon. Not crazy about the insert mod but the transformer mod will be mandatory for me once it becomes available.

Stepping up my blogging game in 2011

So one my New Years resolutions was blogging more. So since my last post was back in August here we go.

Starting off 2011 I’m ready to see what new shows up at NAMM. For anyone who wasn’t ready to show off what they had at AES now is the time. I’m probably most looking forward to hearing (and seeing) what the new Slatepro Audio Fox will can do. Something tells me the final version will be as sexy looking as their Dragon compressor, which is also on my wish list.

Right now I’m in the market for a good mic pre or channel strip. I’m leaning heavily towards the empirical labs mike-e right now, but considering the Vintech x73i, the Fox, and the Miktek mpa-201. My favorite channel strip I’ve ever used is the Avalon 737. The pre on there is sweetest I’ve heard on vocals. If I get a 737 I have to have the black anniversary edition one, and I’m not ready to spend $2250 on a channel strip right now.
Back to NAMM. I’m hoping to see some new stuff from Lynx and Apogee. I’ve decided I’m going with a Lynx aurora 8 for converters for my studio, but I wish Lynx would make an actual interface with flexible connectivity and a couple mic pres. As far as Apogee I really wanted to get an Ensemble, but with it only having 1 adat I/O it just wasn’t enough for me. The new symphony i/o really had my attention but cost nearly $6,000 to put two modules in it. So I wish Apogee would release something in between the ensemble and the new symphony i/o. Really an ensemble with an extra i/o of ADAT is fine with me.
Will we see this NAMM? Probably not, but hey, I can dream right?