Manley Labs STEREO EQ - Manual (Page 13)

Mini Massive and Massive Passive - Similarities & Differences
The Mini Massive is obviously based on the lowest and highest
bands from the Massive Passive. In fact, they share about 95% of the
same components and about 85% of the same circuit board layout.
Most settings using those two bands can be easily transferred from
one to the other.
One intention of the Mini Massive is to be a good answer for those
who took issue with one or another factor of the Massive Passive
even though the number of those who had any issue were few and
most likely the noisiest of these individuals will still find some
rationalizations in their attempts to be internet-orious. But they did
raise some valid points and inspired an alternative version.
Number 1) The Massivo is too colored for mastering. Maybe for
some, but many of the top mastering engineers do use it 5 days a
week and it happens to be one of the most likely pieces of gear to be
seen in professional mastering rooms. That said, the Mini Massive
is designed to be one of the cleanest and most transparent equalizers
ever offered and which is easily verified by you hitting the hardwire
bypass switch reasonably frequently.
On the other hand, the Massive Passive was designed with tubes and
transformers for deliberate color and for those situations where
some departure from digital sterility is desired it is a better choice
over the Mini Massive. These days you might have a variety of ways
to generate "warmth" so the choice of EQ is more open. In other
words the Massivo was designed more with vintage console and
Pultec EQs in mind and created for similar applications. The Mini
Massive was designed more for buss EQ and mastering as well as for
surround and maybe tighter budgets, which brings us to.....
Number 2) The price... Not much we could do about the cost of the
Massive Passive because it does require a lot of parts and many of
them are custom and most are premium quality. By halving the
number of bands, making the chassis smaller and simpler, going
with solid state, and making the output transformers optional, we
were able to offer a slimmed down version with a slimmed down
price tag.
Some might also see the Mini Massive as a single channel 4 band EQ
and set up their cabling or patch bay with that in mind. This gives
them the versatility of a 4 band EQ or a stereo 2 band in a 1 rack unit
package at a competitive price, but with that well known Massive
sound. Great for tracking, great for overdubs, great for mixing.
Number 3) Sculpting in the extreme lows and highs. The Mini
Massive is an evolution of the basic Massive Passive concept and is
designed to really provide some interesting abilities to create huge
bottom that remains tight (transformerless) plus amazingly sweet air
for brilliance or sparkle tweaking. In fact, a warning to not over-do
those kinds of boosts needs to be mentioned. Just because you can
now doesn't mean that you always should. And if you lose fidelity
in other parts of the chain, boosting here might exagerate problems.
Number 4) Portability and reliability. Reliability has never been
much of an issue with the Massive Passive nor are tubes in reality
a fragile technology - quite the opposite, though eventually they
should be replaced. However the myth remains, and for live and
broadcast applications many prefer solid state. These situations also
tend to prefer the smaller size, less heat, the simplicity and lighter
weight. This is for them.
Phase Shift?
Deadly topic. This is probably the most misunderstood term floating
about in the mixing community. Lots of people blame or name phase
shift for just about any audio problem that doesn't sound like typical
distortion. We ask that you try to approach this subject with an open
mind and forget what you may have heard about phase for now.This
is not to be confused with "time alignment" as used in speakers, or
the "phase" buttons on the console and multi-mic problems.
First - all analog EQs have phase shift and that the amount is directly
related to the "shape" of the EQ curve. Most digital EQs too. In fact,
one could have 3 analog EQs, 3 digital EQs, and an "acoustic
equivilant", and a passive EQ, each with the same EQ shape, and
ALL will have the same phase shift characteristics. This is a law, a
fact and not really a problem. The two exceptions are: digital EQs
with additional algorithms designed to "restore" the phase, and a
rare family of digital EQs called FIR filters based on FFT techniques.
Second - Opinions abound that an EQ's phase shift should fall within
certain simple parameters particularly by engineers who have
designed unpopular EQs. The Massive Passive has more phase shift
than most in the filters and shelfs and leans towards less in the bells.
Does this correspond to an inferior EQ? Judge for yourself.
Third - Many people use the word "phase shift" to describe a nasty
quality that some old EQs have and also blame inductors for this. Its
not phase shift. Some inductor based EQs use inductors that are too
small, tend to saturate way too easily, and create an unpleasant
distortion. The Massivo (of course) uses massive inductors (compared
to the typical type) which were chosen through listening tests. In fact
we use several different sizes in different parts of the circuit based
on experiments as to which size combined the right electrical
characteristics and "sounded best". The other very audible quality
people confuse with phase shift is "ringing". Ringing is just a few
steps under oscillating and is mostly related to narrow Qs. It is more
accurately described as a time based problem than phase shift and
is far easier to hear than phase shift. For our purposes, in this circuit,
these inductors have no more phase shift or ringing than a capacitor.
Fourth - A given EQ "shape" should have a given phase shift, group
delay and impulse response. There also exist easy circuits that
produce phase shift without a significant change in frequency
response. These are generally called "all-pass networks" and are
usually difficult to hear by themselves. You may have experienced
a worse case scenario if you have ever listened to a "phase-shifter"
with the "blend" set to 100% (so that none of the source was mixed
in) and the modulation to zero. Sounded un-effected, didn't it, and
that may have been over 1000 degrees of phase shift. Group delay
and impulse response describe the signal in time rather than frequency
and are just different ways of describing phase shift. Some research
shows these effects are audible and some not. The Massive Passive
tends to show that group delay in the mids is more audible than
towards the edges of the spectrum and there may be interesting
exceptions to generalities and conventional wisdoms. The audible
differences between EQs seems to have more to do with Q, distortions,
headroom and topology than with phase shift.
Fifth - Phase Shift is not as important as functionality. For example,
we chose very steep slopes for some of the filters because we
strongly believe the "job" of a filter is to remove garbage while
minimally affecting the desired signal. A gentler slope would have
brought less phase shift but would not have removed as much crap.
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