Neve

[peter_cornell]

Hi list

According to an interview I read with Geoff Emerick (ex-chief 
engineer at Air Studios) on one of Neve's consoles just installed 
after an upgrade he found three channels that sounded "right". 
Neve had designed bandwidth limiting into his consoles cutting 
everything above I think 40 kHz. But these three channels had been 
incorrectly terminated and had an 80 kHz bandwidth. Needless to say 
they changed all channels to sound this way.

> > Now, from what I have heard, even though many people copied
> > the circuit they didn't end up with an EQ that had the Neve
> > sound, until someone discovered that there was a PCB layout
> > error in Neve's boards that apparently changed the
> > characteristics. The error was dumb enough that even Neve
> > themselves hadn't noticed it.
> 
> Bullshit!

According to a lot of engineers, the Neve sound is "in the iron". He 
used transformers from Marinair a radar company and they had 
phenomenal bandwidth (200 kHz +). There are basically 2 stages in the 
modules (excluding those used by the EQ), the first having 
transformers on both line & mic inputs.
The second stage has a transformer as part of the collector load, not 
just a balancing unit tacked on the end of the circuit.

I personally have a 1066 module with both stages & have built quite 
a few mic pre's based on the first stage only (using Neutrik mic 
transformers), which sound great. But the real thing is definitely 
better.  Risking getting into hi-fi territory here it seems to have a 
real depth to it, wonderful sound.

Check the Purple Audio site & Mercenary audio for more tidbits!
Sorry for the lengthy post but this is a really interesting dog bone.

Regards
Peter Cornell