Radial Engineering, famed for their solid live-sound equipment, have announced their first ever product with digital interfacing. The USB Pro is a high-resolution DI box with a digital-to-analogue converter operating at 24-bit resolution and at sample rates up to 96kHz. This allows greater headroom and detail than boxes that are limited with 16 bit, 44.1kHz conversion rates. The USB Pro is USB class-compliant so will work straight out of the box on Mac OS X and Windows 7, XP and Vista.
The main outputs are on stereo balanced XLRs and can be monitored via the built-in headphone amp, while checking for phasing is simple with the mono switch. If buzz from ground loops is encountered, the USB Pro has two side-access switches that insert isolation transformers into the signal path to block DC voltage offsets. On top of this, there’s the familiar ground-lift switch to further reduce susceptibility to noise.
According to Radial President Peter Janis: “For years, Radial customers have been asking us to get into the digital world. We have hesitated due to lack of clear standards and challenges with respect to interfacing with computers. But with the recent advent of self-configuring USB ports, we feel the time is right to finally get involved and the USB Pro is the first Radial product to sport digital connectivity.”
