Ribbon microphone and preamplifier manufacturer Audio Engineering Associates (AEA) announces the first product in their 3rd-generation of microphone preamps, the TRP500.

Over the past 16 years, AEA’s preamps have surpassed the limitations of 20th century electronics, allowing users to fully appreciate the sonic complexities of their microphones. The TRP500 leans on the side of neutral but is unlike other “clean” preamps because of the rich, musical tonality. Optimised for ribbon mics, the TRP500 offers up to 85dB of effortless gain for any microphone. 

“At AEA, we put the same thought and care into our preamps as we put into the development of our microphones: sonic quality comes first,” said Wes Dooley, Founder of AEA. “We hope the TRP500 helps you capture many magical musical performances.”

Based on the circuit and topology of the company’s original AEA TRP preamp, the TRP500 has the low noise, musical sonics, and ultra-high gain and impedance (100,000 Ohms) that AEA is renowned for. The TRP500 excels at drawing out the warmth and lush sound of ribbon mics as well as other top-level microphones. With up to 85 dB of quiet DC-coupled gain, minimal path architecture, and a gentle 115 Hz or 230 Hz high pass filter, this preamp puts as little as possible between you and your audience.

Features:

• Single-channel, 500 series format
• 85dB of quiet, DC-coupled JFET gain
• Ultra-high impedance (100,000 Ohms)
• Switchable 115 Hz or 230 Hz high-pass filter
• Switchable phantom power and polarity reverse

Like all AEA products, the TRP500 is 100 percent handcrafted in Pasadena, California from locally sourced parts. AEA is a family-owned company with a small crew of skilled technicians, many of whom are musicians themselves.

Ribbon mics have steadily been making a comeback into popular recording ever since David Royer released the R121 in 1998. It wasn’t that people didn’t have Coles 4038s on hand, had forgotten about the Beyer M160, or weren’t lusting after museum-quality RCA 44s. It was just that everyone was caught up in the Chinese condenser craze, and no one was really pushing the ribbon bandwagon. But then Chinese-made ribbons started doing for ribbon mics what it had done for condensers; made them so cheap, and sounded ‘good enough’, they were getting bought by group-buy container-loads.

There were a number of different designs that started to pop up. The same ribbed silver stick popularised by B&O back in the day that inspired the R121 — just not as rigorously built, and without the offset ribbon — was easily cloned. And there were plenty of others squeezed into condenser microphone-looking bodies, with longer head baskets, or shorter ribbons to compensate.

Eventually some of the major manufacturers started to get into the game. Shure bought Crowley & Tripp for its hardy Roswellite ribbon material, Audio-Technica dropped its own ribbons, and sE put out its Voodoo line of ribbons, as well as developing one as part of its Rupert Neve collaboration.

Slightly slower to the fray was Rode, but it hasn’t stopped the Australian company putting a lot of emphasis on its ability to design something unique. Last issue Greg Walker took the AEA Nuvo N22 ribbon for a spin, so I thought it would be fun to pit it against the new Rode NTR, as well as a couple of other different ribbon offerings, to provide a useful cross section of the market. The other two mics on hand were the Chinese-made SF12-style stereo ribbons that Hugh Covill handpicks under the Nude Microphone name; and one of the cheapest brand-name ribbon microphones on the market, sE’s X1R. So how long is a piece of ribbon?

Ribbon microphone technology has come a long way in the last few years, with new models targeted at specific applications. It’s no longer just ‘getting a ribbon’; there’s higher SPL-capable models for getting right up on guitar cabinets, all the way down to phantom-powered models with higher outputs for those distant-miked mouse squeaks.

AEA has been at the forefront of this evolution with the introduction of phantom-powered models like the A440 and A840. While the company’s roots are firmly planted in the fertile compost of old RCA designs — which was still evident in their newer phantom-powered models — with it’s Nuvo range, AEA has completely dispensed with the old RCA-style yokes, bodies and grills.

The N22 active ribbon mic is the first cab off the rank, and offers a contemporary looking silver body with a broad silver ‘belt’ and a funky black cloth, cutaway ribbon enclosure. Looking like a cross between an art deco ray gun and a high-end Italian coffee-making accessory, the AEA N22 definitely has presence on the end of a boom stand. The subtly embossed silver Nuvo logo on the front is a nice touch and complements the more traditional red AEA logo on top of the mic. The twin logos are a great metaphor for where a company like AEA finds itself in the second decade of the 21st century — the N22 is a thoroughly modern mic made by people who love vintage gear.

NUVO RICHE

The N22 is aimed squarely at the home-studio-owning recording musician. In a Tony Abbott-like act of hard sell, the manual even describes its ideal target market singer-songwriter as ‘hard-working’. Outside of references to James Brown this is perhaps the first time I have ever seen the words ‘musician’ and ‘hard-working’ together in one sentence. On a more practical level, the N22 has been optimised for close-up miking of sources such as vocals, electric guitar cabs, piano and drum overheads while retaining enough gain to cope with more ambient room positions, and lower quality audio interfaces. The mic is built by hand in Pasadena, USA and utilises JFETs and a custom-wound German transformer. The N22 ships in a nifty black plastic case with an adequate but somewhat uninspiring mini-shockmount and an extended three-year warranty. AEA has thoughtfully enclosed a small cloth microphone sock that will protect the mic when not in use — these are particularly handy for ribbon mics whose large magnets attract small particles of all sorts. Over time these particles can build up and degrade the ribbon element, so ‘socking up’ the mic after hours is a good long-term maintenance policy.

AEA (Audio Engineering Associates) may be a relative newcomer to the world of ribbon mic manufacturing, but its chief designer and company founder, Wes Dooley, is an old hand at it. Mr Dooley has a long list of credits both academically and in the field. From white papers on stereo recording techniques delivered to the Audio Engineering Society (AES), to using and servicing RCA and Coles ribbon mics (both well known and historical ribbon manufacturers), Dooley has spent his life in the audio business.

AEA already has two other ribbon mics on the market: the R84 and R88, both of which have received high praise in serious audio circles in recent times, including previous issues of AT (see Issue 37 for Greg Simmons’ review of the R88). The R84 in particular has already developed a solid reputation, which has seen the mic grow rapidly into a virtual industry standard. The third and latest microphone to be added to the company’s small but well-credentialed inventory is the R92.

SUM & DEFERENCE

Different to the other models both visually and sonically (although still unmistakably an AEA), the R92 ribbon is oval shaped, with a matte aluminum finish on both ends. The central body of the mic, which houses the all-important two-inch, 1.8-micron-thick aluminum ribbon element, has a strong steel mesh covered by a black satin material to protect it from wind blasts and plosives from the outside world. To that end, the R92 has been specifically designed to cater to close miking duties, from vocals to electric guitar amps, and is able to cope with a maximum SPL of 135dB.

It seems a distant memory now to think back to a time (not so long ago) when ribbons were deemed too fragile to be placed in front of loud sound sources like guitar amps. But things have turned around for ribbon mics generally, no longer the fragile and virtually forgotten microphone design they had unjustly become. AEA has contributed a great deal to this renaissance, becoming rapidly renowned for its beautifully solid and powerful representation of guitar amps, brass and other loud and strident instruments. Moreover, this rebirth has in some ways been given a leg up by the widespread, almost ubiquitous acceptance of modern digital recording formats. As people search for ways and methods around the tonal and transient response of digital recorders, and tape becomes a distant memory, so more people are discovering that ribbons can offer a response that treats some of the digital ‘symptoms’ without necessarily providing a ‘cure’.

The R92 has an unusual top-to-bottom mounting system with elasticised rubber shocks at both ends, which, combined with its light weight (less than a kilo), makes it easy to position. It’s unlike many other ribbons I’ve had to contend with over the years, some of which have behaved more like recalcitrant bricks than mics. Like its stable mates, the R92 also has a permanently fixed cable that protrudes from the bottom of its pill-like shape, and which terminates in a female XLR. The whole box and dice comes wrapped in a black carry case complete with instructions for use and care of the mic.

A MIC OF TWO HALVES

Perhaps the most unusual thing about the R92 is its ‘dual’ tone. Like most ribbons, the R92 has a figure-eight polar pattern, with the ‘rear’ lobe being out-of-phase with the ‘front’ of the mic. What’s unusual is that the two lobes of the polar pattern offer distinctly different tonal responses. Its ‘bright’ side, which is easily distinguishable by the AEA logo emblazoned on it, has been tailored to sound more accurate and ‘modern’ than the rear of the mic, which has a noticeably smoother, warmer, almost ‘classical ribbon’ sound to it. This ‘duality’ is great because it feels like a bit of a ‘two-for-one deal’ – classic or modern tone… the choice is yours. The added advantage of this design (in fact, it’s hard to tell which of these comes first) is that the somewhat rounder (and subjectively ‘duller’) tone of the R92’s rear lobe means the mic is less susceptible to picking up too much room sound (figure-eight naturally meaning that the mic faces towards a sound source as well as directly away from it).

This tailored dual-response makes it a somewhat unconventional bi-directional mic, and great fun to experiment with. When I first started using it, it quickly yielded interesting results, particularly on guitar amps. The R92’s high SPL capability is ideal for a fully-cranked amp, and this is where the AEA really comes into its own.

CUT TO RIBBON

From the moment I plugged the R92 into a preamp and turned up the monitors I could immediately tell this was no ordinary ribbon. The noise floor was very, very low, unlike some ribbons of old that often combine the unwelcome combination of both dull and noisy. On further testing the AEA also sounded great through a variety of preamps of different impedances. It really made a difference to the depth of the sound when I used it on cello, bringing out subtle nuances in the performance. Furthermore, the R92 managed to spruce up the el cheapo cello I was recording, giving me less of an annoying ‘rosin tone’ and more of an easy-on-the-ear lush sweep. During the extended time I had the R92 several vocalists passed through it, and nearly all of them enjoyed hearing a different articulation to their voice than what’s typically recorded via a large diaphragm condenser. Of course, it wasn’t always ‘right’ for every vocalist, but what mic ever is? For instance, it didn’t really flatter one singer who we’ve dubbed ‘motorcycle voice dude’ – he only sounds right when using a hand-held Neumann.

There’s plenty to like about ribbon mics, the R92 especially. They soften the signal in such a way that there is a subtle low-pass filter effect, ignoring the hype within sounds in such a way that the human ear can listen past the mayhem and into the body of the signal. Some of my clients inevitably dubbed the sound of the R92 ‘retro’, but to pin this cliché on it is grossly unfair and simplistic. The beauty of this high-input ribbon is that, although the design inevitably has that unmistakable sonic signature, it’s an altogether modern mic, with noise and SPL specifications commensurate with modern demands. It really delivers on big rock guitars, cymbals, horns and acoustic guitar, without the compromises that have traditionally gone hand-in-hand with ribbon mic recordings: the need for extreme high-gain preamps and sometimes unworkably high noise floors. Sure, you can easily get that ‘retro,’ rolled-off warm tone out of this mic but you can also get the big, bold, up-front and rocking ‘sound of now’.

I particularly found the AEA excellent for electric guitars, making them ‘ring true’. I was amazed at how accurately it captured my Fender Deluxe or my scratchy old Eston combo. The R92 also sounded great in front of a drum kit at navel height or simply shoved in a reflective corner of the room with the gain turned up.

HOOLEY DOOLEY

If you’re recording in the digital domain, a ribbon mic of the calibre of the AEA R92 is highly recommended. In a world where too many cheap condensers are often placed indiscriminately in front of every instrument on a recording, it pays to have the contrast of a ribbon mic to provide solid bottom end and smooth, understated treble frequencies. On instruments like horns, electric guitar amps and drums, the alternative ‘view’ the R92 provides is a real eye-opener. If your mic kit is bereft of ribbons and you’re serious about recording, do yourself a favour and check out the R92. It’s everything your $600 condenser ain’t!