Published 1/2/05
The new Trio is three things in one box!
The latest product from Mindprint is the Trio, which they claim is designed to provide ‘all the essential features for high-quality home recording’. Mindprint aren’t the first company to market a product as a ‘total recording solution’ but their approach is a novel one.
The Trio is essentially a hardware front end for computer soundcards, combining the features of a channel strip, monitor controller and A-D/D-A converter (hence ‘Trio’) — in effect, everything you’d need for computer-based recording, apart from a soundcard!
There’s a phantom-powered, Class-A mic and instrument preamp, stereo Aux and Line inputs, send and return inserts, a high-pass filter and a two-band EQ optimised for vocals. The Trio’s automatic Adaptive Response compressor is borrowed from Mindprint’s high-end DTC Dual Tube Channel.
There are unbalanced stereo inputs and outputs which interface with the user’s soundcard, and optical S/PDIF input and output (24-bit/96kHz-capable), plus a pair of 12-segment level meters. On the monitoring front, there are two headphone amps with separate volume controls, three switchable stereo speaker outputs, mono and dim functions and even a built-in talkback mic.
The Trio is set to go on sale in February, with a suggested price of £299 including VAT.
