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Post by thehightenor on Aug 30, 2024 13:27:08 GMT -6
Just a heads up if anyone is interested... Eric finally got me a review unit, I'll be doing a video review on it. I've starting to do some messing around and getting to know it, trying a bunch of weird things. I'm open to suggestions if there's anything people are curious about. I've shot some video sweeping through the phantom power levels on a few different mics. I've got pairs of a few things, so next thing will be having a pair side by side so I can switch back and forth between one of them at normal 48v from the API console and the other at various voltage settings with the Copperline. Eric had mentioned that some mics take a little bit to settle at different phantom power settings, so I want to find some interesting settings with different mics, give them a minute or so to settle and then do some level matched comparisons with the same mic next to it. I've already tried my Soyuz Launcher and Cloudlifter through it. The Cloudlifter was pretty boring, not really any useful changes other than the level dropping. I'll have to do some better level matched comparisons to be sure. The Launcher was much more interesting, especially jacking the voltage up. Turning it down gave some really gnarly fuzz sounds that might give some good results on aggressive drum room mics or a distortion mic. Plenty of other fun things to try, and the thing is build like a tank. The joy of the cloudlifter is the 25db of free JFET gain - it’s great because it’s “boring” add a character pre to a ribbon mic or dynamic - perfect. |
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Post by andersmv on Sept 2, 2024 8:42:36 GMT -6
Just finished the review last night, really fun getting to know this thing with various mics. It's great to have the chance to try something really unique these days. Every mic reacts differently with the voltage fluctuations. The Chandler Type L was not a happy camper when voltage was dropped and pretty much crapped out when you got into the low 30v area. The Soyuz Bomblet on the other hand was still passing signal (although a lot quieter) down at 2v. You'll just have to try it with your mics and see what happens, it's impossible for me to give any generalizations as far as what to expect.
I think the most interesting discovery was controlling voltage with the Soyuz Launcher mic booster. You can get some almost tape/tube like fuzz and transient shaving by slightly dropping the voltage. On the drum example at the very end of the video, in my opinion that was just absolutely glorious sounding if you're trying to add some character and THD to some room mics or some sort of crotch mic to blend and add some aggression to the kit. Pretty awesome...
I don't think this is going to be a massive night/day type of thing with a lot of mics. If you know your room, mics and equipment really well though, I think you'll notice a small but noticeable change when increasing the voltage up to 52v. It might only be a few percentage points of a change in the big picture, but at some point you start looking for stuff like that when you've been doing this a while. I've learned over the years that power is really important, and not enough people are investing in that area starting out. This is a really simple thing to implement with condenser mics, and I have no doubt increasing the voltage up a bit can have a cumulative effect in certain scenarios. All the other features that are build into the Copperline are just icing on the cake and will be extremely useful for a lot of people that simply need a quality external phantom power solution.
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Post by jacobamerritt on Sept 2, 2024 10:29:14 GMT -6
Even as a lover of saturation and distortion, I didn’t find any of those differences that compelling.
Seems the biggest benefit is probably its main purpose- high quality power for microphones. Price point compared to other options still keeps me away.
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