visit us on the web at joemeek.com Joemeek User Guide THREE Place Stamp Here JOEMEEK DISTRIBUTED BY PMI AUDIO GROUP Q 23775 Madison Street Torrance, California 90505 USA 3 Joemeek is manufactured and marketed under the direction of: PMI AUDIO GROUP USA: 23775 Madison Street Torrance, California 90505 toll free: 877-563-6335 fax: 310-373-4714 email: info@joemeek.com UK: P.O. Box 358 Torquay, Devon TQ2 5XS tel: +44 (0) 180 3215111 email: eusales@joemeek.com Written by Allan Bradford, MSc Joemeek® is a registered trademark of PMI Audio Group. ©2004 PMI Audio Group. All rights reserved. Contents threeQ Controls at a Glance..............................................5 Overview............................................................................6 Preamplifier........................................................................6 Insert Point..........................................................................7 Compressor.......................................................................8 Meequalizer.......................................................................10 Mix Input.............................................................................11 Output Stage.....................................................................11 Using the threeQ..............................................................12 Getting Connected.............................................................12 Using the Preamp...............................................................12 Using the Compressor.......................................................13 Using the Meequalizer.......................................................13 Troubleshooting..............................................................14 Technical Specification...................................................15 JOEMEEK reborn ­ the legend grows The Next Generation of Joemeek studio processors represents a quantum leap in the history of the Joemeek legend. Long regarded for its "Big Sound", the original Joemeek gear was both revered and reviled for its somewhat "quirky" nature. Now we have taken the best of what made the Joemeek products sound great, refined it, distilled it, added to it and repackaged it. Properly and robustly engineered for predictable, controllable performance, the new range retains the famous Joemeek sound, with its wide, flat frequency response extending from subsonic to ultrasonic. It also uses genuinely low noise circuitry, with lots of headroom (immunity to overload). Accurate calibration and metering, together with clear panel labelling, give you complete confidence in what's going on. While some equipment pays lip-service to quality and "professional rules" but fails to deliver, the Next Generation of Joemeek products are founded on good solid electronic and audio engineering, and withstand direct comparison with the very best names in mixers and outboard gear. The Joemeek range provides everything you need to get your performance onto tape/disc. About the Designer The Next Generation of Joemeek has been completely re-engineered by renowned audio electronics consultant Allan Bradford. With his background in physics and 30 years experience with the design of instruments, mixers, processors and amplifiers, Allan's unique range of expertise ensures that Joemeek remains at the forefront of music technology. 3 4 threeQ Controls at a Glance PREAMP GAIN - sets the amount of audio amplification. Too little gain and the sound will be too quiet; too much and the signal could become distorted. PEAK LED - lights 6dB below clipping. LINE switch - selects the Line (jack) input instead of the Mic (XLR) input. The LED lights when active. COMPRESS - sets the level of signal (or "Threshold") above which the signal starts to be compressed. ATTACK - sets how quickly the compressor responds to peaks above threshold. RELEASE - sets the time during which the signal returns to its normal size after compression. In general, the longer the time, the less obvious the compression. COMPRESSION METER - 4-Led bargraph indicates the amount of gain reduction in dB, which is taking place at any given moment. COMP switch - turns the compressor on. The LED lights when active. LF - controls the volume of Low Frequencies or "Bass" in the audio spectrum. 15dB of boost or cut is available around 80Hz. MID - controls the middle frequencies in the audio spectrum. 15dB of boost or cut is available at the selected frequency. MID FREQ - sets the frequency at which the MID control operates, anywhere from 300Hz to 5kHz. HF - controls the volume of the High Frequencies or "Treble" in the audio spectrum. 15dB of boost or cut is available around 12KHz. EQ switch - turns the equalizer on. The LED lights when active. OUTPUT GAIN - is the volume control or "Fader" for the outputs of the threeQ. VU METER - 8-Led bargraph shows the output signal level in dB at any given moment. 48V PHANTOM POWER switch - when pressed in, feeds 48V phantom power to the microphone XLR connector. Most condenser type microphones require phantom power to operate. +4dBu/-10dBv switch - selects the output operating level of the threeQ, either to the professional +4dBu level, or to the -10dBv semi pro level. 5 6 Overview In other words: Switch out (LED off) = "Mic" Switch in (LED on) = "Line" Both Mic and Line inputs are electronically balanced. Note: although the Line input is not normally used for microphones, it can be suitable for some high output unbalanced microphones, such as battery powered Electret types. The Line Input (jack) is balanced and wired as follows: Tip: + (hot) Ring: - (cold) Sleeve: ground The Mic Input (XLR) is balanced and wired as follows: Pin 2: + (hot) Pin 3: - (cold) Pin 1: ground PHANTOM POWER Most high-quality studio mics are "Phantom powered", which is to say they have electronics inside them, which get their power from the preamp. Most mics require a supply of 48 Volts, so Phantom Power is often labelled "48V". There is a switch on the back of the threeQ (next to the XLR mic connector) to turn this power on or off. A red LED lights when this power is on. When switching the Phantom Power on, quite a loud thump may be produced, so it is a good idea to turn down the Output Gain (or to momentarily select the Line input), when pressing the switch. The JOEMEEK threeQ is like having one channel of a professional recording studio in a small box. It takes a microphone or instrument, amplifies it, compresses and equalizes it ready to be recorded. Simple to use yet extremely powerful, the threeQ will bring out the best in any microphone or instrument and give the gloss of a professional studio production to all your performances. As well as recording it will also be found useful for live work. Think of the threeQ as four separate items of equipment: · · · · The The The The Preamplifier JOEMEEK Optical Compressor Meequalizer Fader Preamplifier This is the all-important front end to the threeQ. Its job is to accept any type of microphone, instrument or other source of audio signal, and make it loud enough; microphones often need rather a lot of amplification, while guitars, keyboards and CD players need less. Mics need to be connected to low impedance inputs, while instruments prefer high impedance inputs. To ensure correct impedance matching, the inputs are split into an XLR connector for Mics, and a jack "Line" connector for everything else. A switch on the front panel decides which input connector is active. The LED underneath the switch lights to show that the Line input (jack) is selected. When using dynamic or ribbon mics, do not turn this on. It probably won't do any harm but it certainly won't do any good, so leave it off! Consult the microphone handbook if you are unsure what kind of mic you have. There is just one other control, labelled "Input Gain", which covers a range of amplification from 10dB to 60dB. In many other preamps the action of the Gain control is rather uneven, with the 40dB to 60dB range being crammed into the last 1/6th of a turn. All Joemeek preamps use a specially designed control that ensures smooth operation over the whole range of rotation. The (0) symbol next to the 25dB mark, means unity gain, or 0dB, for a signal in the Line input. Hence for Line inputs the range of gain adjustment either side of this mark, is +35dB, -15dB. The PEAK LED lights 6dB below clipping, so occasional brief flashes are OK but if it's on all the time you need to back the Input Gain off! -80dBu or lower, in order for it not to be noticed. The threeQ microphone preamplifier uses state-of-the-art electronics and has an equivalent input noise of around -128dBu (with 150ohm input load). Despite all the hyperbolae and obfuscation, the theoretical best possible performance for silicon-based electronics is about -132dBu. So the preamplifier design used in the threeQ and all other NextGen Joemeek products approaches this limit. To improve significantly on this would require highly specialised electronics and probably a vat of liquid Nitrogen to cool it! The maximum gain available from the preamp is 60dB, in which case the noise floor will be -68dBu. This is actually quite noisy - if you record that noise onto a digital recorder and play it back you can definitely hear it. In practice of course, you do not record and play back "silence" and the rest of the mix will probably be more than 70dB louder than this noise and will mask it completely. Even so it is generally a good idea not to use gains greater than 40dB or 50dB and indeed, it should rarely be necessary to do so. TECHNICAL STUFF Very low noise - does it matter? Yes and no, it all depends what you are doing - what really matters is "signal-to-noise ratio". All electronics produce a certain amount of background noise - it's in the nature of things. Providing there is only a relatively small amount of noise, the signal will cover it up, or "mask" it. So providing the signal is much bigger than the noise, you won't be aware of the noise. So in other words the "signal-to-noise ratio" needs to be a big number, ideally such as 80dB or 90dB. So how do you achieve that in practice? The trick is to keep the microphone as close to the sound source as possible without overloading it, so as to get as much signal out of it as possible. Then you set the Gain control to give only as much gain as is needed to get a decent level into the recorder. Of course when there is no signal going on, you may hear the background noise of the electronics. In that case, given the amount of gain in the studio monitoring system, this noise "floor" should ideally be in the region of Insert Point This is simply an unbalanced "Send and Return" jack on the rear panel. It allows you to patch any other pieces of equipment into the signal path, such as an effects processor or noise gate. To use it you will need a "Y" lead wired as follows: Tip: send Ring: return Sleeve: ground When no jack is inserted, the socket is internally linked, or "normalled", so that the signal flows uninterrupted. Note that the Insert Point is after the Preamp but before the Compressor and EQ. 7 8 Compressor The hardest device to understand, yet one of the most useful, the PhotoOptical Compressor is what gives Joemeek products their unique character. Its job is to make quiet sounds louder and loud sounds quieter, or in other words to reduce the dynamic range of the programme material. It's a bit like manually riding the volume control, except the compressor does it automatically, responding far quicker and more accurately than you ever could by hand. The compressor is applied in several ways: radio station requirements, although it is generally good enough to protect recorders and monitors, where the effect of transients is less critical. Normally you should not hear a limiter operating but if it is driven hard constantly, it can render a mix somewhat flat and lifeless. 4. Accommodation The dynamic range of the human ear is phenomenal, extending from the threshold of hearing (eg: a pin dropping onto soft carpet) to threshold of pain (eg: standing next to a jet aircraft) - some 120dBA in all. By contrast, vinyl, cassette tape and radio broadcasts all have a dynamic range of about half that. Since the advent of the CD, the dynamic range of the medium is far less of an issue and compressors are used more to give a certain "feel" to a production. AM and FM radio however, is still very much compressed to fit its restricted dynamic range. 5. Modification A compressor can change the dynamics, or "envelope" of the track and it is here that the Joemeek Compressor excels! Types of Compressor Most compressors work in essentially the same way: a volume-controlling element or "gain cell" is inserted into the audio signal path. The level of the signal at any given moment is measured and that information is used to control the gain cell. So if the signal gets bigger, the volume is turned ...