MCOct14

– BARRY RUDOLPH barry@barryrudolph.com
RETRO INSTRUMENTS OP-6 PORTABLE AMPLIFIER
RETRO INSTRUMENTS’ OP-6 Portable Microphone Amplifier is a proper rendition of the
classic portable RCA OP-6 tube microphone pre-amp that came out in the 1930s and was
used mostly for remote on-location, live radio broadcasts—some of the greatest recordings of
the past century.
Retro’s OP-6 sports five, 6J7 pentode tubes in a kind of “redundant” all Class-A circuit design.
It has the same size, look and 20-lb heft of the original yet is fully modernized with XLR
connectors, a 1/4-inch (DI) instrument input, 48-volt phantom powering, polarity flip, 25dB
pad, output level control and a VU meter ranging switch that doubles as a “tube checker” for
the three amplifier stages.
The Retro offers three choices of input impedance to match any microphone from vintage
low impedance ribbons to modern condensers and dynamics. Purposely mismatching impedances
also offers a range of tonality changes for any dynamic or velocity (ribbon) mics.
I first tried my Fender Strat plugged into the DI making it sound very fat. My AKG D12 VR
dynamic on a voice and kick drum with the Retro OP-6’s three different impedance choices
was like having several different mic choices.
Next I tried recording vocals using both ribbon and condenser mics. There is plenty of gain here if you are recording quiet singers with a low
output microphone—compared to my transistorized pre-amp, the sound is thick and warm but not
“dark”—more of a glow!
The Retro Instruments OP-6 Portable Amplifier sells for $3,500 MSRP.
http://retroinstruments.com
LH LABS GEEK OUT DAC
LIGHT HARMONIC LABS HAS GEEK OUT, a portable digital-to-analog converter (DAC) with
headphone amp. Geek Out solves two annoying audio problems with music playback using laptop or
home computers: poor quality of the computer’s built-in DAC and wimpy-sounding headphone amp.
Geek Out utilizes a version of the Da Vinci three-layer buffer 32-bit/384kHz and DSD 2 decoding
engine and a Class-A (1-watt) high current output stage with two headphone jacks. Geek Out will
decode either PCM or any DSD audio streams and also sufficiently drive any set(s) of headphones or
in-ear monitors to maximum volume and fidelity and sufficient bass.
USB 2.0 class compliant, Geek Out plugs right into your computer’s USB jack and shows up in the Mac’s Sound Preference window ready to
be selected. PC users will need to download a driver.
There are two 3.5mm headphone output jacks: one for driving most small headphones and ear buds and another for larger and lower impedance
pro-level headphones. My Audio-Technica ATM-M50X’s sounded fine plugged into either. Suffice to say, having two jacks is an awesome
feature in itself—especially when traveling with a friend.
Features I also like are: the LED indicators that show the sample rate, rate multiplier (2X, 4X or 8X) and if the 3D Awesomifier is engaged.
The 3D Awesomifier is useful to increase the level of center-panned lead vocals. It sells for $299.
http://geek.lhlabs.com/geekout
SONY CREATIVE SOUND FORGE 2
SONY CREATIVE SOFTWARE has Sound Forge 2; it uses the same core technology as Sound
Forge Pro Mac 2. It uses 64-bit AU and VST plug-in processing and plays/records up to 32 simultaneous
channels of audio using up to 24-bit/192 kHz resolution. The audio editor contains Wave Hammer,
a flexible audio compressor/limiter with presets I found to work well for getting music mixes as
loud as possible.
I am generally concerned with editing/trimming waveforms on different audio files before I apply
processing. You can jump between either interleaved or a single mono files—each file is represented
as tabs that line up in queue horizontally across the top of the main Edit window.
You can use Sony Creative Software’s native processes such as fade, flip, mute, volume, normalize
and reverse and there is an extensive undo capability. You can save in formats: 3G2, 3GP, AAC, AIF, CAF, FLAC, M4A, MP3,
MP4, OGG, SND, W64, and WAV.
Sound Forge 2 is available for download from the Mac App Store for $99.99 with an introductory price of $79.99.
http://sonycreativesoftware.com/soundforge2
MIX BUSS LITE 2.0 PLUG-IN
MUSIC PRODUCER/MIXER Rob Chiarelli has the first in his Signature Series of DAW plug-ins called Mix
Buss Lite. Designed to process the stereo output bus of your DAW mixer to increase the average loudness of
your music mix, Mix Buss Lite 2.0 comes in AAX (Pro Tools), AU Macs and VST for Windows.
Mix Buss Lite has simplified controls that allow you to use your ears and not fancy metering. The Input
Drive fader sets the amount of loudness boost as indicated by the “Sweet Spot” meter—the orange and yellow
lights will flash/glow with occasional red Sat (saturation) blinks.
Mix Buss Lite offers a range of “coloration” effects. Select Fat for accentuating the upper and lower frequencies,
Warm thickens mixes in the bass, Clear is full range but
with less saturation than Fat, and Full is like Fat except louder.
I found great functionality with Mix Buss Lite beyond the
stereo mix bus. It works great for bass guitar and stereo sub
groups in Pro Tools 11—stacks of backing vocals and guitar
layers all sounded tighter and “fit” better into a big mix.
It sells for $19 as a download.
http://finalmix.biz
BARRY RUDOLPH is a recording engineer/mixer who
has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has
recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat
Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs, and more. Barry has his
own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio
engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a
lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing
editor for Mix Magazine. http://barryrudolph.com
12 October 2014 musicconnection.com