Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5012 Duo Mic Preamp

The Rupert Neve Designs Portico 5012 is a dual channel microphone preamp that features Neve's custom input and output transformers. In addition to individually selectable phase, mute, phantom power and a fully sweepable high pass filter, the Neve 5012 Duo mic pre incorporates a "Silk" circuit which yields the rich warmth and presence of the renowned classic designs. Portico Series Awards: Rupert Neve Designs has been honored three TEC Awards since its inception in 2005. The Portico 5042 "True Tape" Emulator won for achievement in the category of Signal Processing Technology/Hardware. The Portico 5015 Mic Pre/Compressor (#482645) won for achievement in the category of Mic Preamplifier Technology. The 5088 Discrete Analogue Mixer won for achievement in the category of Large Format Console Technology. Rupert Neve Designs received the Mix Certified Hit Award in 2006 for the 5088 Console and the Portico Range. Rupert Neve Designs received the Future Music Platinum Award for the Portico Range in 2007. Microphone input The Portico 5012 Duo preamp's microphone input is balanced but not floating, being a variant of an instrumentation amplifier using a "Transformer-Like-Amplifier" (TLA) configuration with a toroidal common mode rejection low-pass filter that excludes frequencies above 150kHz. The TLA is followed by an actual input transformer permitting a full +25dBu input signal to be handled at unity gain without an input pad over the whole audio spectrum. This combines the advantages of both an electronically balanced and true transformer input. When the phantom voltage is switched off, this input serves as a very high quality line input with an impedance of 10,000 ohm. Low noise, low distortion operation Much care was given to designing the Portico 5012 Duo to produce as little noise and non-harmonic distortion as possible. Carefully implemented signal paths and Class A operation are a large part of the Neve 5012 mic pre's sweet, whisper-quiet performance. Why transformers? The fine subtleties of circuit design relating to sonic performance are gradually becoming more clearly understood. For example, research has shown conclusively that frequencies above 20kHz affect the way in which humans perceive sound quality. But long before scientific evidence emerged, a substantial body of musicians and engineers knew that equipment with apparently the same technical measurements could sound very different. Incredibly small amounts of musically dissonant, odd harmonics have a disastrous effect on the sound quality. Extraneous noise or interference that finds its way into a signal path seriously impairs performance of the whole chain. Many control rooms make use of outboard gear that is not well protected from external signals. Poor grounding of such equipment can be a serious problem. Electronically balanced circuits, much used in modern equipment, can give very good measurements on the test bench but they do not provide adequate rejection of the stray fields found in every working environment. Input and output circuits must be freed from ground dependence so that only the wanted signal enters and leaves the processing path. Transformers are the ideal solution. The sweet and silky sound of Neve's classic old favorite consoles was achieved with big transistors and large high quality transformers. Rupert Neve Designs Portico modules achieve similar quality today without the bulk or the cost. In order for modules to work together as would be expected (i.e. in a proprietary console configuration) without producing hum, RF interference, or other interactions, the connecting interfaces, grounding, levels and impedance must receive careful attention. Each Neve Designs Portico module is a complete integral signal processor that delivers its specified

Get amazing results with this easy-to-use preamp The Portico 5012 is a dual channel mic pre featuring Neves custom input and output transformer designs In addition to individually selectable phase, mute, phantom power and a fully sweepable high pass filter, the 5012 incorporates a "Silk" circuit which yields the rich warmth and presence of the renowned classic designs