Rupert Neve is one of the greatest circuit designers in the history of pro audio, and his name is synonymous with excellence for recording engineers everywhere. So when Rupert gets involved with a live sound product, we should take notice.
Housed in a single-rackspace chassis, the 5045 Primary Source Enhancer is a two-channel device that’s designed to reduce feedback, without creating undesirable audio artifacts/byproducts or negatively impacting the sonic integrity of the source signal. The annals of sound reinforcement are filled with past such devices — a few good, many not-so-good, so I was anxious to put the 5045 through its paces.
The 5045 takes an unabashedly analog approach to the age-old problem of feedback reduction and the extremely Spartan front panel bears this out. Each channel has controls for Time Constant, Threshold and Depth, along with switch selection for RMS/peak detection and process in/out bypass.
Although appearing very gate-like, the 5045 differs significantly from a traditional noise gate approach. Both devices will attenuate the output when a signal falls below a user-defined threshold, but the 5045 is designed to sense when a mic is operating, allowing the signal to continue, while reducing the gain in the absence of a signal thus lowering the chance of feedback. No filters are inserted into the signal, which often creates coloration in other anti-feedback devices.
Ready, Set, Go!
Connections are a snap. The 5045’s balanced XLR inputs/outputs can be fed from external mic preamps or used with your board’s analog channel insert jacks. And with three knobs to tweak, operation couldn’t be much easier. The Time Constant control sets a combination of attack and release settings. It’s a rotary, six-position switch, with no defined values, although the manual recommends either the “C” or “D” setting as starting points for most vocal applications. The longer-release “A” setting works better for sources with more sustained notes, such as miked flute. The Threshold control is a rotary pot with a 30 dB (-18 to +12) range and is used to determine the level at which the processing kicks in, and the Depth control determines the maximum amount of processing that occurs, ranging from 0 dB to -20 dB. With the latter, 0 dB equates to no effect, while -20 dB creates the greatest attenuation and keeping the knob centered around -10 dB offers a lesser chance of any words being cut off, which increases as it is increased.
In the Field
My first outing with the 5045 was mixing the annual holiday concert for the Oakland Youth Chorus for a 500+ crowd at Oakland’s First Presbyterian Church. It’s a beautiful building with a soaring 53-foot ceiling built in the style of a neo-Gothic cathedral, but an environment that’s acoustically so reverberant that it’s tough to mix in.
In fact, the mix was no picnic, due to the nature of the room. I didn’t need any reverb on this gig! The room itself has a wonderful sound, like a large hall reverb return. While sweet, this creates a recipe for feedback disaster, especially when miking small children with weak voices who like to stand about three feet back from the mic and sing very softly. Punch up the gain, and this highly reflective space is going to generate major feedback. It’s less of an issue with the mics that are placed farther back to pick up the rest of the choir, but the two downstage soloist mics have always been problematic in this venue.
One way to counter this is to place the mains (in this case a pair of two-way QSC K10s) farther forward of the stage, on stands set up above the third row, tilted downward slightly and about 20 feet in front of the choir plane. These were delayed about 20 milliseconds so the sound from the speakers arrived at listeners at the same time as the acoustic sounds of the children’s voices from the stage. Yet even with that, the combination of the hard stone reflective walls and soft kids’ voices still proved a challenge.
During rehearsals, I patched in the 5045 into the inserts of my console, set the threshold and kicked it in. I then slowly increased the Depth control, switching the bypass control in and out, until the edge of feedback occurred in the “out” position. Leaving the processor engaged, I gradually increased the Depth until some artifacts were slightly audible (towards the extreme -20 dB end of the scale), and backed the depth off slightly, which yielded a 14 to 15 dB increase in level, with no feedback, glitches or choppiness — a huge and noticeable improvement.
On subsequent gigs, the 5045 proved equally useful, particularly with headset and lavalier mics, which can be prone to feedback. Generally, the 5045 is nearly silent in operation, with perhaps only a hint of audible processing noise, and then only at the most extreme settings. But it certainly does its job and does it well. Now if only there was a plug-in version…
Rupert Neve Designs 5045
Pros: Great sound, simple operation, transformer balanced I/Os.
Cons: Somewhat pricey, uses external power supply.
How Much: $1,795 (MSRP)
Website: www.rupertneve.com
