Two Notes Reload - Manual (Page 21)

Connecting the Torpedo Reload
In any setup that involves a microphone preamplifier, it is important to set the correct gain on the
preamplifier so the level of the recorded track is high enough. It is commonly recommended to set
the gain on the preamplifier so the instrument’s signal will hit -16dB FS to -18dB FS (i.e., dB Full Scale,
the value indicated on your sound card and sequencer input meter).
4 Power attenuator and load box
4.1 RE-ACT™, how does it work?
Some attenuators are resistive, others are reactive, and most of them are passive.
Passive means that the attenuator’s electronics does not require a power supply.
Resistive means that the power out of your amplifier is tamed by the presence of one or several
resistors on the signal path. The load impedance plays a huge role on the sound, and a resistive
attenuator will make the tone somewhat darker, with losses in the high and low frequencies.
Reactive means that reactive elements (transformers, coils and/or capacitors) are used instead of
mere resistors. With this technology, the damping factor will decrease with the level of attenuation.
Most of the time, a reactive attenuator means losses in character and fidelity, "muddy" sound and
other unwanted effects.
Another downside of passive resistive/reactive attenuator is the way the listening level is controlled,
usually by some stepped potentiometer, which does not allow for precise volume setting, and limits
you to a set of fixed attenuations.
RE-ACT™ stands for "Reactive-Active Attenuator", which means it uses a reactive load and active
overall schematics. In effect, the RE-ACT™ can be described as the conjunction of two elements:
• a reactive loadbox inherited from the critically acclaimed Torpedo Live series, followed by
• an ultra-low-distorsion, wideband, low-noise solid-state amplifier based on a widely used HiFi
architecture.
The role of this system is to present a speaker-like impedance to your amplifier, get rid of the
power, then re-amplify it to the desired volume. This design offers a number of advantages over
resistive/passive ones:
• the amp is always connected to a fixed impedance, which is as close as possible to a real
speaker impedance;
Two Notes Audio Engineering Torpedo Reload 21