(The 2-610’s 6072 tube output stage has been moved in the LA-610 to serve its compressor’s makeup gain.) The LA-610 also includes a 15dB pad on its front panel, a feature I wish the 2-610 also had, considering the latter’s limited headroom. However, the unit’s preamp circuitry departs from a 2-610 channel in significant ways: Two 12AX7 tubes serve the LA-610’s two gain stages, as opposed to one 12AX7 and one 6072 per 2-610 channel. The unit’s custom I/O transformers are the exact same ones used in the 2-610. The compressor section does not have a sidechain input. A high-impedance (instrument DI) input is accessed via an unbalanced ¾-inch phone jack on the front. The 2RU LA-610’s rear panel sports separate mic, and line inputs and a line output on balanced XLRs. And so I particularly relished the thought of reviewing the company’s new all-tube LA-610 channel strip, which combines a modified channel of the 2-610 with an LA-2A - style optical compressor.
I often chain them in series to record tracks in my studio. Not for everyone, but you can get a lot of really cool sounds of it.If I were to list my five favorite analog processors of all time, the Universal Audio LA-2A leveling amplifier and 2-610 tube preamp would easily make the list.
When it works, it’s solid as hell, and it works well on singing vocals and it’s a wonderful bass DI.Ĭonsider it a dark chocolate preamp flavor in the world of similarly metaphorically-flavored gear. It’s definitely not the most intuitive unit in the world, and for voiceover, you can get away with a lot cheaper and easier to use. It does come on very strongly very quickly, and there aren’t any controls like knee, attack, or release to fine-tune, as they’re all tied into the unit’s algorithm. I’ve given it some different output tubes to open up the sound a bit, giving it more headroom and letting the compressor breathe a little more.
This unit’s served me very well over the years. I can’t imagine a voiceover situation that would require more compression than that going in, unless your voice is an actual bass guitar. 5-1.5 on the compressor, depending on what I’m doing. The big knobs are your input level, compression, and output.
It’s just awesome and does a lot, and I’m very familiar with it, which is why it’s in my house.) Experiment to taste works well with some voices, other benefit from a more solid-state sound. (By the way, I’ll say this now – if you’re starting out, or are ONLY interested in voiceover, this unit is too much and not really what you need. I like a little bit to help fuzz out otherwise offensive mouth noises, and to give my sound a little character, since that’s what I paid so damn much for. So on the left side, you’ve got a gain knob, which adds tube warmth to the sound. But since we’re focusing mainly on VO, I can attest, it treats the voice very well. In my humble opinion. A lot of folks beat up on it because its compressor can be too dark, too extreme, too flattening, and those are valid concerns. We used on vocals, guitars, as a bass DI.it was used on pretty much every session in some capacity. This sleek, sexy little unit is what I was primarily trained on at CCM Studios in Denver. The Universal Audio LA-610: Good for Voice Over?