Manley Langevin HP-100 More-Me Headphone Mixer 2/1995 - 6/ 1996 D-SUB - Manual

Congratulations on the purchase of the LANGEVIN STUDIO HEADPHONE SYSTEM. With
this station you will be able to offer musicians a better sounding headphone amp than most major studios
and be able to provide some significant improvements over basic stereo cue boxes or any other headphone
system we know of. We subtitle this unit "THE MORE ME BOX" because this is possibly its most
important feature. Along with the typical cue mix or the control room mix, the engineer can offer each
musician a fader dedicated to their own instrument. Experience teaches us that each musician always wants
to hear more of themselves and that trying to meet this demand with several musicians and with a few aux
sends is quite a mind bending challenge. As long as each musician's headphone is plugged into a separate
station, each can have their own custom mix within arms reach. This frees up the engineer to concentrate
on recording and getting the best sound. It can free up console aux sends so that they may be used for
effect sends. It also tends to allow the producer to concentrate on perfomances because the musicians
monitoring needs are met quickly and easily.
While we strongly suggest that musicians not monitor too loud and possibly damage their hearing,
we know that many musicians will tend to listen to incredibly loud headphones while playing. Most
systems will distort or be gross sounding at these levels causing even more hearing damage, fatigue and
headphone damage than this system will. It is designed to sound good at all levels from quiet to extremely
loud with headphones of all impedances or efficiencies.
The communication features and options are incredible. This inexpensive headphone system has
more and better communication features than any commercially available recording console or other
headphone system. There are three main concepts.
1)
The ability that allows the producer to mute the music and talk or to talk within the music mix.
The former is most appropriate during tracking with several loud musicians playing when the producer
needs to stop a bad take. This is named INTerupt. The latter is more appropriate for vocal overdubs and
coaching and is called TALK.
2)
The ability to talk to individual stations. This can prevent embarassment within a group, or allow a
producer to only be heard by the conductor.
3)
The ability that allows the musician to talk and/or get the control rooms attention even if their mic
is off during a playback or the room is dark. There is a built-in mic on the station with a button for
"TALK". Pushing the button can light a LED (one per station) in the control room and break into the main
monitors (if selected).
The Player can mute the headphone amps. The MUTE switch can be thought of as a "PANIC
BUTTON" for those who have ever experienced sudden feedback or a weak signal suddenly "cutting in".
These accidents generally mess with the mood and the hearing of the players. The Mute also functions to
mute each side of the headphones. Primarily this feature is for musicians who wear only one side of the
phones. This is common with vocalists, brass and string players and allows them to hear acoustically what
they are producing. Functionally pushing the MUTE button cycles from ON (GREEN LED) to MUTE
(RED LED) to LEFT MUTE to RIGHT MUTE (RED + GREEN = AMBER) and then back to ON.
Audio FADERS are used rather than rotary pots for the input levels. This gives obvious visual
cues to the user. The MONO inputs PAN. The stereo inputs switch to MONO, SIM and STEREO. SIM is
Stereo Image Modelling and creates a stereo image in the phones that is closer to speakers and reduce the
difference the musicians hear when they return to the control room. This circuit slightly boosts the low and
low-mid frequencies and makes them more mono. This is usually the best sounding setting with a stereo
mix fed into the stereo inputs.
Tone controls. These are specially designed for headphones and musicians. The BASS control is
designed to musically raise the loudness of the instruments BASS and KICK. The TREBLE is designed to
raise the level of the HIGH-HAT and add a pleasant airy quality to VOCALS without harshness or
hardness that often happens with headphones. Another design parameter was to help minimize differences
between the most common models of headphones for studios. Technically, these are very gentle slope shelf
EQs set to higher frequencies than commonly used. Center position is flat and very gradual near 12:00 on
the control.