Radial Engineering Presenter Compact Mixer Review

Aloha!

I saw the Radial Engineering Presenter at the Winter NAMM show earlier this year and thought it was a pretty neat solution for people who conduct training classes or hold a lot of meetings. This product is a small mixer that provides mic, 3.5mm and USB inputs, as well as a couple of speaker outs.

According to Radial: “The USB input on the Presenter allows for direct connection to a laptop for high quality audio playback, perfect for presentations that include digital audio files, or for DJ applications. This connection also provides power for the Presenter, eliminating the need to carry around a separate power adaptor. For connection to mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets, a 3.5mm stereo input jack is included on the front of the unit, and can be adjusted using the program level control. The XLR microphone input is paired with low and high EQ controls to tailor the frequency response, along with a low cut filter that rolls off excessive low end.

Both the microphone and the playback signals are mixed to stereo XLR balanced outputs, which can be connected directly to a PA system or a pair of powered speakers. A mono switch is provided if only one speaker is needed, and a ground lift ensures that the output signal is clean and free of buzz or hum from ground loops.”

Well, they are not lying. The Presenter is small and packed with features in its 14-gauge steel box. Pretty much everything you need to do can be accomplished with the single XLR , USB type-B and 3.5 mm TRS inputs, and there are a pair of XLR outs. There is even a port where you can install a laptop lock so it is harder for this mixer to disappear.

To use it, both the microphone and the playback signals are mixed to stereo XLR balanced outputs, which can be connected directly to a PA system or a pair of powered speakers. A mono switch is provided if only one speaker is needed, and a ground lift ensures that the output signal is clean and free of buzz or hum from ground loops. The presenter can be powered with a power supply (not included), or by a laptop over USB. One downside is that only laptop or a 3.5mm input at any one time, which seems like a pretty major disadvantage when giving a presentation. On the plus side, the Presenter can be used as a USB recording interface, so lectures can be recorded for later use.

Radial Engineering is a quality company that makes good stuff, and their products are priced accordingly, meaning that the Presenter comes in at $299 (street price). This is a lot of cash for a small mixing board, and if you look around there are a lot of mixers under $100 that have all of these features (including the USB) and more. This one would be a hard sale for me…

Mahalo!

Press Release: Radial Engineering Has Been Sold!

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I cannot say that I am super happy to hear about this:

"Anaheim CA, NAMM, January 25 2018- Mike Belitz, President and CEO of Ultimate Support Systems, has acquired Radial Engineering Ltd.

Established in 1991, Radial Engineering Ltd. was originally developed as a range of cable products by outgoing President and CEO, Peter Janis. The release of their first direct box in 1996, the Radial JDI, was just the beginning in a long line of innovations that saw Radial become the leading name in premium direct boxes and audio solutions. In the intervening years, the Radial brand family and distribution network has grown to include a diverse catalog of brands, including: Primacoustic, Tonebone, Reamp, Hafler, Dynaco, Iso-Max and Jensen Transformers Inc. Ultimate Support and Radial Engineering Ltd. will enjoy shared strategic and logistical advantages under leadership of Mike Belitz; with the end result of wider availability to retailers, distributors, and end-users all over the world.

"I have always been passionate about premium accessories in the music industry. Instruments come in and out of fashion, but musicians and audio professionals will always need well designed, high quality solutions. Ownership of Ultimate Support Systems and Radial Engineering Ltd. will offer incredible possibilities for the future." - Mike Belitz, President and CEO of Ultimate Support Systems and Radial Engineering Ltd."

Mahalo!

Product Preview: Primacoustic Element Acoustic Absorbers

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Companies have been selling acoustic absorbing panels for decades, but there has not really been much variety in what is available – just a few colors and any shape you want (as long as you want square panels). Primacoustic changed things up when they introduced their Broadway line of panels in a variety of colors, thicknesses, and shapes, and now they have gone a step further with their new Broadway Element shape.

Primacoustic is based out of British Columbia, Canada, and they produce top-shelf acoustic solutions for many applications, including studios, concert halls, workplaces, and residences. Even if you have not heard the name, you have seen their products before, and you are surely familiar with their parent company, Radial Engineering. I have huge respect for Radial, as you will see if you search this blog for previous reviews of their products…

The Broadway line of panels is made from high density 6lb per cubic foot glass wool, with up to six times greater density than typical foam panels. This glass wool is perfect for controlling primary reflections and flutter echo. Also, this material has been laboratory tested and meets Class-A/1 fire safety standards by meeting stringent ASTM-E84 and Can-UL S102 requirements for flame spread and smoke development.

Broadway panels are available in three different thicknesses (1”, 2”, and 3”), and in a variety of shapes – square, triangular, rectangular, and radiused; many of their panels come with a choice of beveled or square edges. Four colors are available: black, beige, and gray, as well as a paintable white version if you need to match a specific décor.

Element is the newest shape in the Primacoustic line-up, and it definitely more stylish. These are hexagonical panels that measure 16-inches across, and they come in the same colors as other Broadway panels. Element panels come only in a 1.5-inch thickness, and only beveled edges are available. This shape provides a new range of design possibilities, especially when it is combined with the paintable finish option.

These are high-quality panels, but with a street price of $279.99 USD for a box of 12 panels they are priced competitively with other products on the market and they are priced accordingly. If I get around to building a dedicated studio, I would love to pick up a few sets of these panels and create my own designs. If you are interested too, head on over to Primacoustic’s website to see what they have to offer – it is really cool stuff!

Mahalo!

NAMM 2017: Radial Engineering Key-Largo Keyboard Mixer Preview

Aloha!

I pretty much like everything I have purchased from Radial Engineering, and their Firefly, JDI and J48 are all amongst the best DIs I have ever used. Overall, Radial Engineering builds an impressive collection of professional audio, and one of their stuff is cheap, as they use quality components and their boxes are built with workers earning first-world wages in Canada.

I had the pleasure of meeting with Jay from Radial at NAMM 2017, and he walked me through all of their new products, including splitter boxes, stereo attenuators, a backing track switcher, and all kinds of other cool stuff, but my favorite piece was the new Key-Largo keyboard mixer and DI. This is a useful product that is unlike anything else on the market, which puts Radial Engineering in a good position to sell a metric ton of these things.

Keyboard players often use more than one keyboard, which can get tricky when tying their sound into the mixing board. Some will source a small mixer and cobble things together with the end results that are not always great. Radial took this into account and developed the Key-Largo for this crowd, integrating a dedicated mixer with a DAC, an effects loop, and remote controls, all of this in a relatively small pedal format. Let’s look at what you will have to work with on this unit:

There are plenty of inputs and outputs to work with on the Key Largo. You have four inputs: three stereo ¼-inch jacks and a USB input, as well as stereo effect inputs. Outputs include balanced ¼ TRS stereo monitor jacks and a pair of XLR stereo outs. Also included are a MIDI IN/OUT, and a jack for a volume pedal.

The controls are simple, so that the user will not get bogged down when trying to use this unit live. Each of the four channels has a level control and an effect send knob. There is also and effects receive knob, and level controls for the monitor and main outs (each with a ground lift switch). The two footswitches control sustain and effects send / receive.

The functionality of the Radial Engineering Key-Largo goes beyond what you would get if you bought a small mixer to use with your synths. The USB connection lets you tap into audio files on your laptop and add them into the live keyboard mix. The mixer allows the addition of a stereo rackmount effect to the mix, with the footswitch turning on the effects loop, and the MIDI connectors allow pass-through data to other devices. And of course, it is cool that the keyboardist can set up his own output to the mains and monitors.

I think that Radial Engineering’s Key-Largo is a product that keyboardists will really dig, and it should sell itself, especially with its surprisingly low price of around $379.00. It goes on sale in February, 2017; for more details head on over to radialeng.com

Mahalo!

Radial Engineering J48 Active Direct Box Review

Howdy!

I have reviewed the Radial Engineering Firefly and JDI direct boxes before and had nothing but praise for them, but they have a lot of other great products in their line-up, including the J48 active direct box.

Radial Engineering builds an impressive collection of products, including my favorite direct box, the aforementioned Firefly. Their stuff is comes dear, as they use quality components and their boxes are built with workers earning first-world wages in Canada.

First off – why would you need a direct box? If you want to send your instrument’s signal directly to the mixing board, a direct box will allow you to do this with a minimal increase in outside noise as well as reducing signal loss. It does this by converting a high impedance signal to a low impedance signal, as well as balancing this signal.

If the impedance is lowered, it will travel over long lengths of cable with less signal loss. Unfortunately, low impedance signals are more susceptible to noise created by magnetic fields – and just think of all of the magnetic fields created on stage by the amplifiers and lights. Old-school landline telephones also send low impedance signals over ridiculous lengths of wire with virtually no added noise. How do they do it?

They use balanced lines, which I am sure you have heard of if you have ever messed around with sound equipment. Balanced line split the signal into two equal parts, with one part in phase and the other part purposely inverted (out-of-phase). There is also a magnetic shield, which makes up the third pin of your standard XLR cable. Outside noise that passes through the shield is picked up equally by both wires. When the two signals come back together, the out of phase signal is brought back into phase along with the noise it has collected. The original signal is now in phase and the noise goes out of phase with its counterpart and cancels itself out.

So, a direct box (or DI box) takes care of all of this in one little component: It converts the high output impedance of the pickup to a low impedance signal and convert the unbalanced connection to a balance the line. Then you can plug it straight into a microphone line input and put your sound into the hands of the guy running the board. I hope you trust him…

This was all done with no added power, and a transformer was used to accomplish this task. Active DI boxes came out about 30 years ago because it was found that passive boxes did not work as well with high-output active basses, onboard preamps and keyboards. These units use batteries or phantom power (48V) without an expensive balancing transformer to provide the same results.

The Radial Engineering J48 active direct box is a bit more spendy than other simple direct boxes on the market, but it uses the phantom power to run a balancing transformer and has a military-grade printed circuit boards so that it ends up being a durable piece of equipment that works very well and should last for the rest of your career.

Looking at the unit, it is about the same size as an effect pedal (5 ½ x 3 x 2 1.2 inches), and it has a 14-gauge solid steel chassis painted in a lovely deep blue with neatly screen- printed graphics. It is shaped sort of like a hardcover book, so the steel wraps around and protects the switches from being torn off if you drop it or as it bangs around in your road case, There is a rubber pad on the bottom to help isolate it and to keep it from moving around.

The input panel has the usual 1/4-inch instrument input and traditional thru-put (to send your signal on to an amplifier). There is a merge switch that changes the thru-put jack into a second input, thus allowing a stereo signal to be summed into a mono signal. The instructions printed on top if the box, in case you forget how it is supposed to work. There is also a -15dB pad switch in case you have an exceptionally hot input, and an LED for the 48V phantom power check.

On the other side, the output panel has a balanced 600-ohm XLR connector with a hot pin 2 hot per AES specifications. There is a polarity reverse switch to toggle pin 2 and pin 3 to allow interface with older non-AES compliant equipment. The ground lift disconnects the pin 1 to allow for input and output isolation. The LOW CUT switch is an 80Hz high-pass filter that minimizes resonant feedback with acoustic instruments. This switch also headroom by eliminating unneeded bass frequencies.

In the real world, it does all of this exactly like it is supposed to. After you get it set up and plugged in you can forget it is there and get down to the business of making music. It is really nice to have a product that does exactly what the company says it will. It specs out with a 20Hz to 30kHz frequency range and it is quiet and perfectly isolated and with no added distortion you can count on your signal getting to the board just the way that you created it. You can use it to run straight into the board or into the snake with no fear of overloading the system.

I have tried it out with really high output basses (Alembic, Sadowsky, MusicMan Bongo, and Kubicki Factor) as well as a variety of keyboards and acoustic guitars with active preamps, and all of them worked spectacularly with the J48. They sounded exactly the same as they did when run directly into an amplifier, and I am completely hooked.

All of this quality and performance do not come cheaply. The Radial Engineering J48 active direct box has a list price of $220 and a street price of $199. It is worth every penny, and you should have one in your gig bag! Mahalo!

Radial Engineering JDI Direct Box Review

Howdy!

I rained down praise upon the Radial Engineering Firefly direct box last month, but they have a lot of other great products in their line-up, including the JDI passive direct box.

Radial Engineering builds an impressive collection of products, including one of my direct boxes, the aforementioned Firefly. Their stuff is comes dear, as they use quality components and their boxes are built with workers earning first-world wages in Canada.

First off – why would you need a direct box? If you want to send your instrument’s signal directly to the mixing board, a direct box will allow you to do this with a minimal increase in outside noise as well as reducing signal loss. It does this by converting a high impedance signal to a low impedance signal, as well as balancing this signal.

If the impedance is lowered, it will travel over long lengths of cable with less signal loss. Unfortunately, low impedance signals are more susceptible to noise created by magnetic fields – and just think of all of the magnetic fields created on stage by the amplifiers and lights. Old-school landline telephones also send low impedance signals over ridiculous lengths of wire with virtually no added noise. How do they do it?

They use balanced lines, which I am sure you have heard of if you have ever messed around with sound equipment. Balanced line split the signal into two equal parts, with one part in phase and the other part purposely inverted (out-of-phase). There is also a magnetic shield, which makes up the third pin of your standard XLR cable. Outside noise that passes through the shield is picked up equally by both wires. When the two signals come back together, the out of phase signal is brought back into phase along with the noise it has collected. The original signal is now in phase and the noise goes out of phase with its counterpart and cancels itself out.

So, a direct box (or DI box) takes care of all of this in one little component: It converts the high output impedance of the pickup to a low impedance signal and convert the unbalanced connection to a balance the line. Then you can plug it straight into a microphone line input and put your sound into the hands of the by running the board.

The Radial Engineering JDI is a bit more spendy than other simple direct boxes on the market, but it is a durable piece of equipment that works very well and should last for the rest of your career.

Looking at the unit, it is about the same size as an effect pedal, and it has a solid steel chassis, painted in a lovely green hue with neatly screen printed graphics. It is shaped sort of like a hardcover book, so the steel wraps around and protects the switches from being torn off if you drop it or as it bangs around in your road case, There is a rubber pad on the bottom to help isolate it and to keep it from moving around.

The input panel has the usual 1/4-inch instrument input and traditional thru-put (to send your signal on to an amplifier). There is a merge switch that changes the thru-put jack into a second input, thus allowing a stereo signal to be summed into a mono signal. The instructions printed on top if the box, in case you forget how it is supposed to work. There is also a -15dB pad switch in case you have an exceptionally hot input.

on the other side, the output panel has a balanced 600-ohm XLR connector with a hot pin 2 hot per AES specifications. There is a polarity reverse switch to toggle pin 2 and pin 3 to allow interface with older non-AES compliant equipment. The ground lift disconnects the pin 1 to allow for input and output isolation. The speaker switch is a second -30dB pad that can be used in with the -15dB input pad to allow the JDI to be connected in parallel with a speaker. This function includes a speaker emulation filter circuit. And lets the sound guy can tap the post-distortion signal, and

Unseen by human eyes, inside the JDI is a Jensen JT-DBE transformer, which is used as its main driver. The Jensen has magnetic memory, thus eliminating phase distortion. It is quiet and perfectly isolated and with no added distortion you can count on your signal getting to the board just the way that you created it. You can use it to run straight into the board or into the snake with no fear of overloading the system.

In the real world, it does all of this exactly like it is supposed to. After you get it set up and plugged in you can forget it is there and get down to the business of making music. It is really nice to have a product that does exactly what the company says it will.

As this is a passive device (no battery or phantom power required), the JDI is perfect for hot devices such as active or self-powered instruments, including acoustic guitars and basses with built-in battery-powered preamps, and AC-powered equipment such as drum machines, DJ mixers, and keyboards. These types of devices can overload active boxes, making them sound thin and shrill. The JDI can handle any of these things without distorting.

All of this quality and performance do not come cheaply. The Radial Engineering JDI passive direct box has a list price of $220 and a street price of $199. It is worth every penny, and you should have one in your gig bag!

Mahalo!