Recording - December 2011 - 10

The Great Gear Grab-Bag!
Reviews by Mike Metlay with Darwin Grosse, Lorenz Rychner, and Paul Vnuk Jr.

Let’s kick off our holiday gift extravaganza with a greed-inducing assortment of audio hardware from stomp boxes to microphones, audio interfaces to earphones. There’s something in here to tickle every fancy, and remember: if you’re reading about it here, it’s been tested and given a real thumbs-up by our staffers... or by Yours Truly. Enjoy!—MM

Yamaha AUDIOGRAM 3 and AUDIOGRAM 6
$149 and $199; www.yamahasynth.com Yamaha quietly makes audio products that sell like hotcakes to a large number of recording musicians out there; they offer simplicity and great sound with no fuss. For your gift-giving pleasure, here’s a look at a couple of the unsung heroes of the Yamaha line: the AUDIOGRAM USB audio interfaces. Both are bus-powered desktop units in sturdy thick plastic enclosures, seen by computers as 2-in/2-out with 16-bit resolution and up to 48 kHz sample rate; signals from all inputs are mixed in the analog domain before conversion and transmission into your DAW. They’re bundled with Steinberg Cubase AI 5 for Windows and Mac. Yamaha provides low-latency ASIO drivers for Windows at www.yamahasynth.com/downloads; no Mac drivers are needed. The AUDIOGRAM 3 is nicely sized with an angled front panel for easy access. It has two inputs: one mono with a Neutrik Combo jack for balanced XLR mic or 1/4" TRS use, and one stereo with unbalanced RCA or 1/4" TS inputs. Its stereo output is also available on RCA, TRS, or as a 1/4" headphone out. Front panel controls are very simple: phantom power and Hi-Z switches for Input 1, Level pots for both inputs and the output, and LED signal-present and clip meters for the outputs. Zero-latency monitoring is permanently enabled, with all input signals mixed with the DAW’s playback in the outputs.
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RECORDING DECEMBER 2011

The AUDIOGRAM 6 looks rather like a simple mixing console, offering four mixer channels, two mono and two stereo. The first two channels offer Neutrik Combo inputs with mic/Hi-Z switches, and controls for preamp gain, compression (see below), and channel output level. Input 1 has switchable phantom power, and a Mono/Stereo switch turns the two mono channels into a stereo-panned pair. The stereo channels each have preamp gain and output level pots, and connections on 1/4" TRS; the output section has 1/4" TRS outputs and a headphone out, with a Master Level pot and a DAW level pot for blending playback with the main mix. There are no pan pots or aux sends. The separate Gain and Level pots, combined with Peak LEDs on each channel, are a nice touch; it’s easy to get your levels set for optimum signal-to-noise ratio and then mix your inputs to taste, as you’d expect on a larger mixer. The compressors are single-knob affairs where turning up the knob adjusts the ratio while trimming the output gain; they’re not very flexible, but they’re quite musical-sounding and do a good job of smoothing out uneven performance dynamics. Both interfaces sound very good and are super-easy to set up; if you’re in need of the simplest possible front end for your computer audio system without sacrificing audio quality, the AUDIOGRAMs will do the job elegantly.

NuForce NE-700X and NE-700M
$65 and $75; www.nuforce.com After years of listening to headphones of all shapes and sizes, and three or four Gift Guides in a row of earbuds purporting to be excellent for listeners who really care about quality audio, it is getting harder to impress me with new designs. Over the years, the main overall trends to my ears have been “more volume” and “more extreme highs and lows”. In an effort to impress people, earbuds have been getting shriekier, boomier, and above all, louder. Like the loudness wars in audio mastering, this is a transitory and imaginary “improvement” at the cost of lasting harm, or at least of an overall substandard listening experience. When I got the new NE-700X earbuds from NuForce (and their sibling the NE-700M with built-in

http://www.yamahasynth.com http://www.nuforce.com http://www.yamahasynth.com/downloads

Recording - December 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - December 2011