Published 14/11/08
Rupert Neve debuts his first microphone
We’ve known of the collaboration between Chinese mic manufacturer SE and legendary analogue hardware designer Rupert Neve for a while now, but so far, no products from the partnership have been released. This is about to change.
What makes the alliance intriguing is the fact that Rupert Neve has never made a microphone before (although he has developed designs and concepts in the past). Even so, the SE Neve RNR1, a Neve-designed, SE-manufactured ribbon mic, sounds like it should be very successful indeed.
It’s a ribbon mic with an unusual dual-transformer design: one for the input and one for the output. Rupert explains: “the ribbon has a very small impedance, and we need to step that up with a transformer of sufficient quality that it doesn’t lose anything. This goes into the amplifier, then we have an output transformer that is almost identical with the ones we used 40 years ago; smaller in size, but doing the same job.”
Even more unusual is a ribbon transducer that has the facility for its element to be physically tightened by the user. SE don’t recommend this (and nor would we, for that matter), but it does allow for the characteristics of the mic to be altered in the studio.
The result of the design, say distributors Sonic Distribution, is a very high-quality mic that performs “like a condenser”, with lots of high-frequency information retained, plus the nuances of the capsule that define the ribbon sound.
Sonic even say that the RNR1 will out-perform products that cost three times its price of £1880 including VAT. We look forward to putting that to the test in a Sound On Sound review!
Future microphone releases from SE Neve will reportedly include a tube model and a solid-state condenser; we’ll keep you up to date with news of these when we can.
To watch an interview with SOS Editor In Chief Paul White, SE's Siwei Zou and Rupert Neve, conducted at the San Francisco AES show, click here.
Sonic Distribution +44 (0)845 500 2500
www.sonic-distribution.com
We’ve known of the collaboration between Chinese mic manufacturer SE and legendary analogue hardware designer Rupert Neve for a while now, but so far, no products from the partnership have been released. This is about to change. What makes the alliance intriguing is the fact that Rupert Neve has never made a microphone before (although he has developed designs and concepts in the past). Even so, the SE Neve RNR1, a Neve-designed, SE-manufactured ribbon mic, sounds like it should be very successful indeed.
It’s a ribbon mic with an unusual dual-transformer design: one for the input and one for the output. Rupert explains: “the ribbon has a very small impedance, and we need to step that up with a transformer of sufficient quality that it doesn’t lose anything. This goes into the amplifier, then we have an output transformer that is almost identical with the ones we used 40 years ago; smaller in size, but doing the same job.”
Even more unusual is a ribbon transducer that has the facility for its element to be physically tightened by the user. SE don’t recommend this (and nor would we, for that matter), but it does allow for the characteristics of the mic to be altered in the studio.
The result of the design, say distributors Sonic Distribution, is a very high-quality mic that performs “like a condenser”, with lots of high-frequency information retained, plus the nuances of the capsule that define the ribbon sound.
Sonic even say that the RNR1 will out-perform products that cost three times its price of £1880 including VAT. We look forward to putting that to the test in a Sound On Sound review!
Future microphone releases from SE Neve will reportedly include a tube model and a solid-state condenser; we’ll keep you up to date with news of these when we can.
To watch an interview with SOS Editor In Chief Paul White, SE's Siwei Zou and Rupert Neve, conducted at the San Francisco AES show, click here.
Sonic Distribution +44 (0)845 500 2500
www.sonic-distribution.com
