BIG STUDIO UPGRADE | 500 series mic preamps: Neve, SSL, API & more with the Cranborne Audio 500ADAT

[Applause] hi everybody and welcome to another compass block studio episode uh today we are actually going to be upgrading some of the equipment in our studio um for those of you who have been following us for a while and know the back story of compass block studio um when i started the studio back in 2018 over here in ahmedabad in india the gear we used initially was kind of like okay you know let's just get started so um our main interface was the focusrite sapphire um pro 40 which is served as very well and it's a solid uh interface for anybody who's interested in buying like a slightly older firewire based interface that's actually pretty pretty pretty decent the um well we needed 16 channels of multi-track capabilities at the studio and the sapphire pro 40 only has eight mic trees so we decided to expand that with eight more focusrite preamps specifically the sapphire octa prime mark ii which is again a solid adat based expander for any sort of interface and with both of those two combined we had 16 channels of multi-track capabilities and if you've seen our live sessions you know we kind of need a lot of inputs in order to record a lot of our live sessions typically we use between 14 to 16 channels when we shoot a live session especially if it involves a full band uh the drums itself take out takes up about seven inputs anyway so uh we needed 16 chance to start with and that's what we used in 2018 when we first started the studio now fast forward a couple of years and uh earlier this year in fact we upgraded our interface from the sapphire pro40 which has served us so well and we've used on every single like record that we've produced over here has actually been using that interface and we moved from the sapphire pro 40 to the uad apollo x8p and shout out to my guys at pro musicals for helping us get that the beauty about the x8p with its unison preamps and its console inserts um the available dsp of it allows us to emulate you know some of the most famous preamps in the world like the nev 1073 or the api channel strip uh the mandy voxbox we even have the helios uh we have the the ua610s it allows us to mimic the impedance level of these hardware trees it gets the same sort of gain staging approach and the beauty is it's that it's it's super flexible so uh you know we can use la2as as inserts on the console app we can use 1176s for compression on the way in so it really gives us the sense of having outboard gear without really having the outboard gear and that's the beauty about the apollo x8p so we're replacing our sort of tried and tested octa pre mark ii and we're finally upgrading from that to getting some real outboard my phrase and i'm so excited about this ever since i started learning about you know audio engineering and you know going through manuals and books about some of these legendary hardware mic trees i've always dreamt of owning one of these in the studio and now we have the opportunity to own eight of them this is all possible thanks to the cranbourne audio eight at 500 so what it essentially is it's that it's a 500 series rack that has ada conversion built into it so we can put eight of our favorite 500 series uh mic trees i mean you can use compressors you can use eqs as well but we need 16 channels at the studio so we've populated all eight slots with mic trees and just like our octa prime mark ii which was connected to our interface via adat uh this is also fundamentally an aid at expander so now onto the mic brace what have we selected in our buffet of mic freeze 500 series micros in the world uh to use over here at the studio so we have the rupert neve designs 511 the rnd511 the beauty about this micro is that it's got 66 db of gain of stepped gain along with a 6 db trim on top as well it has phantom it has a polarity switch it has a high pass filter but the key feature of this mic pre is the silk feature and the silk feature basically is an emulation of transformer based emulation and you can add as much of it as you want because there's a rotary knob for it so you turn on the silk circuit and then you can add as much of that saturation vintage never sound that that sort of needs are known for and you can add as much of that to your liking so you can go from a clean pre to a really colored tree with just one knob the very next micro we have is the ssl vhd now this is a super cool mic pre first of all it's an ssl so you can't really go wrong with an ssl mic pre the really cool thing about the vhd is that it has the vhd i believe stands for the variable harmonic distortion or variable harmonic drive it has a button where you can sort of choose to drive from second order harmonics to third order harmonics and you can choose how much to drive that from from this rotary knob it has a polarity switch a bad um you know phantom the usual stuff but i'm more interested in getting that colored sound the next mic pre is actually a very special mic pre for anybody who knows anything about audio engineering the one name that you'll hear more often than not is neve and the one mic to go with that is going to be the 1073 and you know i've heard fables of the 1073 on forums and on on you know records of like how incredible this preamp is it is that's the standard of what a preamp should sound like and i can't believe i get to say that we have the privilege of owning an actual neve 1073 it's the 500 series which they started making recently but it has the same components the same transformers uh wired to the same specifications as the original 1073 so i'm super excited to try that out and of course i mean the ridiculous amount of gain that comes in it the next micro in fact again we have a pair of these uh is the cranbourne audio camden 500. um i've heard a lot about the cranbourne audio 500 for a long time and now that is paired with it with its sort of bigger adat 500 series eight at cousin i really wanted to get two of these as well the amazing thing about this is that it's super affordable and it's super colorful so it has a mojo circuit in it um in fact it has a thumb and a cream circuit which then you can add as much of saturation and you want with what they call mojo which is groovy baby groovy baby so when it comes to preamps and like the most famous preamps we've got neve covered in our rack we've got ssl covered in our rack and we've got an api as well covered in a rack here we have the api 312. it has some pretty cool features it has a pad it has a polarity switch as well and it has this three to one ratio which basically sort of changes the way the transformer functions within the within the circuit to give a lot more coloration a lot more saturation from the transformer as well our very last fibrous use preamp is the focusride red one now this is a legendary micro in fact out of all the micros that we have there are four of them that have rupert neve's name on them uh the two rnd 511s like i said the 1073 as well as the focusrite red one the red ones and the red series preamps of focusrite are legendary and go way back and this is an exact replica of that so i'm super excited to try this one out as well so the one cool thing about the cranbourne audio is that it has adat in and adat out which means unlike our previous setup we can choose what to be the slave and the master for the clock source based on the reading that i've done i think the apollo is going to be the clock master and this is going to be the slave as you can see putting in the 500 series models was not too difficult uh one thing i did note about the nave is that there are two switches behind the nave 1073 um number one number two and they basically refer to whether or not you're putting this in an api style lunch box or if you're pairing this with um the nev 1073 eq as well which we're not so we don't have to worry about that but this is a non-api launch box so the number one button has to be switched on and when everything is ready to go this is what it looks like so [Music] you

Channel: Compass Box Music

Views: 4,545

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

Keywords: music, compass box studio, ahmedabad, delhi, mumbai, bombay, moody, new music, new release, indie recording, recording studio, studio life, audio engineering, neve mic, microphone, hardware, gear, gear slutz, gear nerds, nerd, studio, mic, drums, guitar, bass

Id: E0rwkSYox0U

Length: 8min 29sec (509 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021