

Ives factory, now doing business as Carnhill.Ĭontrolwise the 1073’s mic pre starts and ends with one single knob. Current production units use transformers made to the same specs in the original St. All 1970s-era units will include one or the other, and while I have seen online debates as to whether one is superior to the other, they are essentially the same design. Ives, was brought on board to help with the increased demand. As popularity grew a second manufacturer, St. (The folks at Universal Audio disagree, saying the transformers are actually among the most linear, best-behaved components in a very complex circuit.) The original transformers were made by Marinar. The preamp is a Class-A design with transformers on both its input and output stages, which many argue are its most important sonic components.

The 1073 is equal parts microphone preamp and equalizer. As with all of UA’s upgraded versions in the past few years - like the Teletronix® LA-2A Classic Leveler Collection, 1176 Classic Limiter Plug-In Collection, and the Fairchild Tube Limiter Plug-In Collection - the now-Legacy version of the 1073 and its lighter 1073SE variant are included with the newly modeled 1073 as part of the new 1073 Preamp & EQ Collection. That original bundle is no longer available, although you can still get the Neve 1081 by itself (and a non-Unison version of the 31102, which is electronically identical to the 1084). If you are thinking, “Wait, didn’t UA already release a 1073 years ago as part of a larger Neve bundle that also included the 1081?” Yes, they did.
Tracking with uad plugins software#
Thanks to the cooperation of AMS Neve in England and the generous loan of a brand-new 1073N from our friends at Professional Audio Design, I had a chance to listen to the hardware and software side by side. Thanks to its sound and helped by decades of third-party clones, as well as the current AMS Neve spec-for-spec reissues, it’s not much of a stretch to say the the 1073 is one of the best known and most sought after mic preamps in history.
Tracking with uad plugins movie#
The 1073 was superseded in 1973 with the launch of the similar, but expanded 10 mic pre/EQ modules, the latter used in the 8048 console that recently became a movie star in Dave Grohl’s film Sound City. It soon became an official part of Neve’s line as part of the 8014 desk. The 1073 mic preamp/EQ was built by famed console designer Rupert Neve and dates back to 1970, where it was part of the Neve A88 console custom-built for Wessex Sound studios. New Unison-infused designs are on the way we got a glimpse of some cool upcoming models (including guitar pedals!) at NAMM, as reported in this issue. The other current model is the ubiquitous Neve 1073, which we will be reviewing here. One is the 212L preamp module found in UA’s recreation of the API Vision Channel strip thanks to both UA and API, we will have a side-by-side comparison of the plug-in and the hardware coming up in a future issue.

In addition to the 610 series, there are currently two other mic pre models available. My August review had me comparing my own SOLO/610 pre (reviewed January 2007) with the company’s UA 610 Tube Preamp & EQ Plug-In Collection I was quite pleased with the “feel” and reaction time of the plug-in models, which did a great job of capturing the spirit and vibe of the classics - so much so that for those tracking sessions I stayed with the new 610-B model for the whole session. The preamps in the Apollo and Twin are digitally controlled and designed to alter not only their gain staging, but also their impedance, to match the original hardware’s specs. However, unlike a typical plug-in, this all happens at the input stage, not in the DAW, and it’s not only a software process. Then, through the magic of circuit modeling, you can inject the colors found in the modeled preamps into your sound. Unison starts with a clean, uncolored microphone preamp of UA’s own design. Unison uses software coupled with physical hardware to emulate the sound and characteristics of vintage mic preamps. One of the highlights of Universal Audio’s Apollo Twin interface/DSP Engine (reviewed August 2014) is its Unison preamp technology, also found in the original 8-channel Apollo.
