Cranborne Audio - Camden 500 - 500 Series Preamp

Cranborne Audio Camden 500 Series Microphone Preamp

500 Series Mic/Line/Instrument Preamp with Selectable Input Impedance, Variable Coloration, and Highpass Filter

The Cranborne Audio Camden 500 is a mic, line, and instrument preamplifier with truly impressive low-noise and low-distortion performance as well as frequency and phase linearity at all gain settings. The net result is a stunningly clean, pristine, and natural-sounding 500 Series preamp module that delivers every source as a neutral canvas you can paint with your choice of analog and digital processing. But when you want vintage British tonal character, that’s where Cranborne’s Mojo circuit comes in.

Clean, Precise, and Natural - at all gain positions

Whilst preamp specifications often quote fantastic figures at specific gain values, when the gain is increased, those figures often change radically. Camden 500 was designed to retain all of its impressive performance specifications at all gain positions from 8dB to 68dB. This means that even when the preamp is running at maximum gain, the Phase and Frequency response remains linear and THD always remains inaudible - enabling all gain positions to be usable for any source and mic combination.

Vintage, Warm, and Coloured - thanks to Mojo

Camden 500 features mojo - a new type of saturation circuit that consists of an array of filters and discrete second/third order harmonic generators that allow precise emulation of the saturation and low-end reinforcement behaviours of vintage transformer and valve-based equipment. The key to Mojo is that it can be dialled in to taste; use subtle amounts for gentle saturation, or dial it in to well beyond the point that destructive clipping would usually occur with transformer-based. Perhaps the very best part of Mojo is that it can be bypassed to reveal the pristine base sound of the Camden 500.

Thump

Thump is a style that works best on - but is not limited to - low-frequency based instruments. Thump excites low-end content by boosting harmonics in the range of ~100Hz to 20Hz and below without increasing the fundamental frequencies - resulting in fuller low-end on all reproduction mediums. As Thump is not EQ-based, the additional harmonic content is shaped by the source and it’s existing low-end frequency content resulting in a natural addition of extra “Thump”. Similar-sounding EQ moves will result in extreme wooliness as all sonic energy is boosted - even unwanted audio in-between the hits.

Cream

Cream introduces a vintage smoothness that enables tracks to sit deep within a complex mix in a way that cannot be replicated with EQ. The Cream setting drastically increases THD whilst smoothing-out the low-mids. As with Thump, Cream is not EQ based and is purely achieved by blending 2 saturation stages with the dry signal and additional harmonics. Cream varies entirely on the harmonic signature of the incoming source. It will increase high-end forwardness and create unique harmonic-based tonal shaping effects on mid-range instruments, but it will also add low-end on full range sources as well as unique “compression-style” effect on transients.

STL Pro Audio is the authroised NZ distributor for Cranbourne Audio Dealer