Thermionic Culture THE EARLYBIRD 2.2 2 Channel mic, pre amp with eq User Manual
Page 8
©Thermionic Culture Ltd., September 2010
7
3 Metering
The meters are a VU type, however they do have a
compressed scale above 0VU. This feature has been
applied to the meters because a mic-amp will naturally have
un-compressed signals passed through it. A signal like this,
on a normal VU scale, will tend to look as if there is either
too little level, or so much level that it is ‘off the scale’. As the
Earlybird has such a lot of headroom available before
distortion becomes a problem, we wanted the VU scale to be
useful when running the mic-amp ‘hot’. In this way the
meters can still display what is going on without simply
hitting the end stops at high level.
The Meters are aligned to measure the output of the
electronics (less 2dB) before the output trim controls. The
meters closely match the output of the unit after the output
trim when the controls are set to 8.5. When the controls are
at maximum add 2dB to the VU reading. When the output
controls are set below 8.5 the output of the unit will be lower
than is shown on the VU meter.