Dave Hill Designs
Dave Hill Designs is the speciality line of pro audio components from Crane Song Audio owner Dave Hill. Comprised of the Europa 1 Adjustable Color Preamp and the Titan Compressor Limiter, these are 'color' pieces especially suited for bringing vibe to musicians and engineers in project studios and commercial recording studios.
Dave Hill Europa 1 preamp mic input has 3 input impedance choices which are 2.2K ohms for normal microphone operation, 300 ohm and a Hi-z choice for different microphone sounds. Unique to the Europa pre-amp are 3 controls for changing the color of the pre-amp. The first control is a SPEED which changes how fast the pre-amp can respond. The Even Harmonic Control provides 9 levels of color, and the Odd Harmonic Control also has 9 levels color.
Dave Hill Titan is an analog compressor-limiter with a very large range of color and control choices with recall. The main audio path is a discrete class A design. Resetability is attained by using stepped controls and encoders that have their values displayed on Titian's color LCD display. Titian is a digitally-controlled analog device with a very high speed dsp side chain that allows the design to push the limits beyond what is possible in the design of an analog side chain.
The VCA COLOR control provides a mix between a very clean PWM gain control device and a vintage gain control element. The vintage gain control element is a diode type compressor circuit. There are 16 steps in the cross fade-mix control for a wide range in choices
The PARALLEL MIX control blends the unprocessed audio with the compressed audio, a parallel compression function. There are 16 steps in the cross fade-mix control for a wide range in choices.
The DYNAMIC COLOR control is a control that provides harmonic content that is opposite in nature of the harmonic content that the vintage gain control element generates. The effect of the Dynamic Color control can be described as making the sound 'bigger'. This function has 16 steps to provide a wide range of sonic control.
The FAT AIR switch that will add air or fatness to the compressed audio.
With +24 dbu input and output levels, the Dave Hill Europa processors can also be utilized in a mix environment for coloring sub groups or the stereo master bus.
