Cranborne Audio Camden 500

Full Description

Cleanest, Crispest Recordings Possible

Cranborne Audio has designed Camden 500 from the ground-up. Their mission is to create the ultimate in front-end studio technology. Just by hearing the richness of the recordings, you will agree that their mission was a success. Ready to withstand the modern workflow and some of the tougher recording techniques, it is ready for anything you throw at it. The preamp tech is custom designed by Cranborne Audio to achieve a low-noise and low-distortion performance as well as frequency and phase linearity. This will give you the most crisp and freshest recordings possible, on every stage, from input to master. Across a wide range of dB levels, the Camden 500 will give you amazingly warm quality - whether you need to record a quiet input or serious power - you won't be disappointed by the Camden 500's clarity.

Don't Lose your Mojo

Camden 500 comes with Mojo which is a great way for you to get vintage sound in your studio pipeline. It's a new type of saturation method with incredible filters and discrete second/third order harmonic generators. The accurate, tactile knob means that your filtering can be dialed in to your own taste. From a slight vintage valve sound to an overdriven and clip-ridden signals. It's there for when you need it, if you just want Camden 500's beautiful clean tones then you can bypass Mojo entirely, but once you've heard it on your tracks, you'll find little reason to avoid it.

Thump and Cream

When recording low end and bassy instruments, it can often be difficult to capture a crisp sound. Sometimes a lot of the clarity is lost because of low end roll off found in some other preamps. Thump is a wonderful tool that boosts the harmonics of 100Hz to 20Hz. It does all this without boosting the fundamental frequency which can often give your bassier tracks too much boom.

Cream gives you the vintage smoothness you need on your guitar, on your vocals or on anything you might want. The Cream setting drastically increases THD whilst smoothing-out the low-mids. The beauty of Cream is that it varies entirely on the harmonic signature of an incoming source, increasing the bright qualities of your instruments. Thump and Cream are amazing tools for crafting that specific sound and tone you want from your recordings. You won't believe you managed without it.

Camden 500's quality can revitalize your studio and give you a creative and technical edge.

Reviews

"...few [500 series preamps] are this well built or designed, few sound this clean and quiet, and very few have this much sonic versatility." Sound on Sound

Features

• Fully-discrete, transformerless design featuring our custom ‘Camden’ preamp topology designed by our Director of Engineering - Edward Holmes.
• Optimised for and fully-compliant with the 500-series format. Camden 500 is not a 19” unit shoe-horned into a 500-series module, it has been designed from the ground-up to perform under the low-voltage power rails and supply current limitations of the 500-series format whilst delivering groundbreaking performance.
• Performs at the near-theoretical limits of noise, distortion, and phase/frequency linearity at all gain settings.
  • EIN: THD+N: Intermodulation Distortion: Phase Shift: Freq. Response: 200 kHz, all gain settings
  • CMRR: >70dB, typ >85dB, 35dB Gain, 10-20kHz, 100mV Common mode
• Optimised input Impedance and input headroom for Mic, Line, and Hi-z sources.
  • Mic Preamp, Instrument Di, and - thanks to Mojo - line-level analogue saturator.?
  • Reamp tracks from your DAW through Mojo to apply analogue saturation to your stems, VST, and stereo mixes.
• Custom ‘Mojo’ analogue saturation circuit with variable control, true bypass, and 2 discrete styles - Thump and Cream.
  • Thump excites low-end content by boosting lower odd/even harmonics from a range of 160Hz to 20Hz and below.?
  • Cream boosts odd/even harmonics whilst also reducing the amplitude of the fundamental frequencies and applying typical transformer-style transient taming.
• Gold Flashing on backplane contacts for increase conductivity and durability.
• Designed and engineered in the United Kingdom

Specifications

• Minimum Gain: Mic= 8dB, Line = 0dB, Hi-Z = 3dB
• Maximum Gain: Mic = 68dB, Line = 60dB, Hi-Z = 63dB
• Input Impedance: Mic= 8.9kOhms 48v Off, 5.4kOhms 48v ON, Line = 24.3kOhms, Hi-Z= 1.5MOhm unbalanced, 3MOhm balanced
• Max Input Level: Mic = 17.6dBu (Output Impedance: 150 Ohms
• Max Output Level: 27.5dBu (Equivalent Input Noise (EIN): Frequency Response: ±0.25dB (200 kHz, 35dB gain), 200 kHz, max gain)
• Phase Shift: THD+N: Intermodulation Distortion: Hi-Pass Filter (HPF): 80Hz, -3dB, 12dB/Oct
• Current Draw: 120mA per rail - idle, 140mA per rail - typical use case
• CMRR: >70dB, typ >85dB, 35dB gain, 10-20kHz, 100mV Common mode
• Slew Rate: 20V/uS, 35dB gain, 25dBu out
• Dimensions (mm): 31.8/133.35/170.11 (w/h/d)