The JM828 mic preamp will be the first new Joemeek unit developed under the management of PMI Audio Group.

The JM828 is an 8 x 2-channel mic preamp designed around Burr Brown chips. It’s housed in a 1U rack case in distinctive Joemeek Green. The new unit is expected to ship in May 2003, with a suggested list price of $1,000 (US).

PMI Audio has been the North and South America distributor of Joemeek since the product line launched in the early 90s. The future of Joemeek was thrown into question with the recent demise of Fletcher Electro Acoustics, which manufactured Joemeek products. Now PMI has taken over the trademark, and says it has big plans for the well-known and very green line of signal processors.

PMI says the entire line of Joemeek products is being redesigned in England, by a team headed by former CLM Dynamics and Neve designer Allen Bradford. Their plan is to streamline the product series, improve build quality, and enhance the processors’ feature sets, while retaining the warm Joemeek sound. PMI says a new all-aluminum front panel, anodized in the traditional Joemeek Green, will make all of the new products look better as well.

Each of the eight channels of the new JM828 will offer:

• 48V phantom power
• Phase Reverse
• Mic/Line Switch
• Peak and Signal Present indicators
• Gain control
• Level & Pan
• Solo
• Impedance Control (50/200 Ohm)

The JM828 has individual outputs on each channel via balanced 1/4″ jacks. Both line level inputs on 1/4″ balanced jacks, and XLR balanced mic inputs are on the rear panel. When nothing is plugged into the line input, the mic/line switch defaults to a 20dB pad switch.

The output section has a stereo L/R output control and a headphone jack with control. In addition, there are L/R LED meters and a Solo LED for monitoring. The master section output has L/R out on 1/4″ balanced jacks, and inserts for the L/R buss. There is a summed mono 1/4″ output jack for external feeds.

Several JM828s can be cascaded together via an expansion in/out, making it possible to configure up to 32 inputs that all buss to the L/R.

The release of the full line of re-designed Joemeek units is scheduled for summer of 2003, with the half rack units expected to appear in the spring.

Joemeek Web Site

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In a move that makes some of music production’s most sought-after classic audio effects available to a new generation of musicians and engineers, Eventide has jumped into the software plug-in processor market.

Long renowned for its classy and distinctive-sounding outboard effects boxes, notably delays and pitch shifters, Eventide has launched a new line of software emulations of some classic effects, including the H910, Omnipressor®, Instant Phaser™, Instant Flanger™ and H949. Under the Clockworks Legacy label, the Eventide plug-ins will be available for Digidesign’s ProTools HD platform.

The Omnipressor plug-in has attitude fit for a Queen

Tony Agnello, Eventide chief technology officer, says his company’s decison to port these classic algorithms to the desktop was an idea whose time had finally come.

“We’ve been receiving requests for Eventide plug-ins for some time, but we were concerned that the current crop of desktop platforms wouldn’t be capable of supporting our algorithms and the high quality threshold our hardware has set over the past three decades,” Agnello said at the launch during the Winter NAMM show in Anaheim.

“With the release of ProTools HD, our concerns were vanquished. With the proven quality and reliability of this platform, were confident that it was the best avenue for designing our first plug-ins, Eventide Clockworks Legacy™.”

The new series of five plug-ins brings a heritage of Eventide innovation and quality to the desktop environment. This series features the five key products that were made at the Eventide Clockworks facility on 54th Street in Manhattan during the 1970s and 1980s.

The Omnipressor, which was introduced in 1971 and was available through 1984, was an analog compressor with attitude. It offered simultaneous compression above the threshold point, and expansion below, and made its way onto hundreds of signature recordings of the seventies and eighties. Queen’s Brian May was a very early customer and the Omnipressor quickly became a part of his signature guitar sound.

The Instant Phaser features a sweeping filter bank

The Instant Phaser, also introduced in 1971 sold through 1977, was a single-function analog processor with a sweeping filter bank with two outputs that are 180 degrees out of phase from each other. Members of Led Zeppelin were so impressed, they even agreed to endorse it. Take a close listen to “Kashmir,” you will hear the unmistakable sound of the Instant Phaser.

H910 - the very first Eventide Harmonizer effects processor

The H910, Eventide’s first Harmonizer® brand effects processor, was immediately recognized by the music world as a milestone product when it was introduced in 1975 and sold through 1984. Tony Visconti was among the early devotees, using it to create the unique snare sound on David Bowie’s “Young Americans,” “Low” and “Lodger.”

Instant Flanger? emulates the distinctive sound of two open reel tape decks moving in and out of phase

The Instant Flanger, an analog flanger, was first released in 1976 and sold though 1984. It replicated the effect of two open reel tape recorders with identical material. When the tape flange was accidentally touched, the sound of a plane taking off roared through the speakers. The Instant Flanger was one of the first hardware products to recreate this effect electronically and was widely used on hit records thoughout the seventies and eighties.

The H949 Harmonizer was used by many top engineers and performers, including a young Jimmy Page

The H949 was the first “deglitched” pitch changer. Introduced in 1977 and sold through 1984, the H949 was the only piece of digital gear Jimmy Page allowed in his rig. It became a staple in most successful studios of the time and is considered by many leading producers and artists to have immeasurably influenced that era’s music.

The process of porting over the algorithms has been executed with meticulous dedication to quality, according to Agnello. “The value in the Clockworks Legacy plug-ins is that they replicate the quality, versatility and functionality of our orignal dedicated processors,” he explains. “We recognize that any departure from those sounds would be fatal.”

Agnello also stresses that Eventide will continue to design and manfacture dedicated hardware processors.

“Though ProTools HD has become the platform of choice in many high-end music and post production faclilties, we believe there is still a compelling case for making hardware products. Hardware products can be integral to the process of performance and composition and are increasingly used in tracking because the real time feedback between the performer and the effects changes their approach. It is a critical interactive process that is often forgotten.”

“Our core knowledge consists of well over a thousand preset algorithms, made up of over two hundred effects modules which can be arranged in virtually any configuration using our unique ‘Anything-to-Anything’ routing capabilities. This will be cross-developed for future plug-ins, as well as offered as software upgrades for our hardware. It makes good sense that people producting their release using Eventide plug-ins would want to use the same effects in a hardware box when they go on the road” states Agnello.

“Developing plug-ins was not a move we made lightly,” Agnello concludes, “but we’re extremely pleased with the results and I’m confident that the universe of ProTools users will agree. We are moving full force into the plug-in arena with a strong foundation of success among the most discerning professionals. The stakes are high, but we are confident that we bring a lot to the table.”

The Eventide Clockworks Legacy series of plug-ins offer full automation, MIDI Control, and Pro Control integration to take advantage of the ProTools feature set.

Eventide Web Site

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While digital music files such as MP3 and Widows Media Audio (WMA) are popular for playback on portable MP3 players and personal computers, CD players and radios still reign supreme in family rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms.

At CES 2003, Onkyo demonstrated the new NC-500 Net-Tune Client, a compact stereo system that unites high fidelity sound with home PC networking, to deliver MP3 music to any room in the house.

Onkyo is positioning its Net-Tune® technology as an easy-to-use home audio network that delivers audio from PCs and digital media files to hi-fi stereo and home theater systems.

Net-Tune is available as a compact ‘stereo receiver’ component, the NC-500, priced at $400 (US) by itself, or $500 (US) in a compact stand-alone package with speakers. Net-Tune capability is also provided on the Onkyo TX-NR900, a full-featured 7.1-channel home theater receiver ($1,500 US).

To audio enthusiasts, the Onkyo NC-500 is a compact ‘stereo receiver.’ Computer networking people will call it a network ‘client’ device. Either way, it connects to standard wired or powerline Ethernet local area networks (LAN), which are becoming increasingly popular with consumers to simultaneously connect multiple home PCs to the Internet. Onkyo’s Net-Tune searches your home network to access MP3 files stored on family PCs or to play streaming Internet radio stations arriving at the PC through a high-bandwidth DSL or cable modem.

Up to 12 NC-500s can independently access music on the network at the same time without interfering with each other. Each person can listen to the same or different music as others on the network, selecting songs by album, artist, genre, or playlist.

With millions of homes adding broadband DSL and cable modems, consumers are adding home Ethernet networks so everyone in the house can go on-line simultaneously. As these networks expand, Onkyo Net-Tune products can plug into these networks, giving consumers even more benefit from their networks.

The Onkyo NC-500 has connections for an external CD player and includes a built-in AM/FM radio. It can also be used as a source component with outputs for delivering music from the network to a conventional stereo receiver.

Onkyo USA Web Site

Universal Audio, the manufacturer of authentic vintage analog reproductions and DSP-powered plug-ins, demonstrated its 2192 Dual Digital to Analog and Analog to Digital Converter at the NAMM Convention in Anaheim, California on January 16-19, 2003.

True to the company motto, Analog Ears; Digital Minds, the 2192 Dual DA/AD Converter is the first product to combine Universal Audio’s expertise in high-quality vintage analog gear with the advanced digital design technology it acquired with the recent purchase of software developer Kind of Loud Technologies.

The 2192, a single rack unit, provides simple front panel controls, supports sample rates up to 192K, and transcodes between AES/EBU, S/PDIF and ADAT in realtime, with single and dual wire AES modes. The 2192 is due to begin shipping in April 2003, retail price has not yet been announced.

“What really sets the 2192 apart from other DA/AD converters,” said Universal Audio VP of Engineering Joe Bryan, “is its Class-A analog circuitry, which has exceptional detail and image clarity, yet retains the warmth and character of the original source at all sample rates.”

The 2192 offers tremendous flexibility in signal routing and monitoring. For example, you can run signal into the analog inputs at sample rates ranging from 44.1K to 192K, and simultaneously output it to AES/EBU (single- or dual-wire), S/PDIF and ADAT (with industry standard S-MUX interleaving for sample rates above 48kHz). The selectable output monitor allows you to monitor any of the digital inputs, or the analog input with no interruption to the transcoding, making the 2192 an ideal hub in any personal or professional studio integrating the best of analog and digital technologies.

The 2192 also serves as an extremely high-quality digital to analog and analog to digital converter. As a front end for a native workstation, the 2192 provides two channels of sterling sound quality for tracking, monitoring and mastering. Or if you’re working on a digital console or workstation that utilizes higher sample rates, the 2192 will dramatically improve your monitoring environment and the quality of your analog masters.

More 2192 Details

Universal Audio Web Site

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