Metric Halo Ships Mobile I/O ULN-2 Interface

Sep 24, 2008 10:11 PM

           
 

Metric Halo has shipped its new Mobile I/O ULN-2 Expanded ($1,695) Mic Pre, Processor, and FireWire interface. Powered by an onboard 2d processing card and version 5 of MIO Driver and MIO Console software, the ULN-2 Expanded can be used as a FireWire recording/mixing interface or as a standalone 24-bit, 96 kHz mic pre/converter system with processing.

According to the manufacturer, the ULN-2 Expanded provides two analog inputs with low noise (EIN at –132 dBu @ 50 Ohms) and high gain (72 dB) preamps. Both input paths include balanced analog inserts. The unit also includes two analog outputs, a stereo control room/headphone output with individual level controls, AES/SPDIF I/O with SRC, front-panel metering, and Word Clock I/O. In addition, ADAT implementation makes the ULN-2 Expanded a 12-input/14-output interface, along with optical SPDIF support with asynchronous SRC for the optical SPDIF input.

Furthermore, the balanced analog insert in each input path allows the ULN-2 Expanded to be used as a standalone analog mic pre/direct box. The sends may be used, alternatively, as an active splitter to drive a backup recorder or to patch in analog dynamics processing between the mic pres and integrated converters.

MIO software provides Character processing, which selectively adds fifteen different types of low-order distortions to the inputs and mix busses of the system. The integrated 2d Processing is said to offer 5.5 times the available processing power of the original Metric Halo +DSP implementation, and the SIMD engine allows for extra power for certain operations like mixing.

In standalone mode, this single rack space interface operates with the converters directly routed to and from the AES/SPDIF I/O, ADAT, or TOSLINK. It also works as a digital monitor controller.

The ULN-2 Expanded comes with a bundle of basic production plug-ins, including MIOStrip (a channel strip with Gate, Compressor, and 6-band EQ), HaloVerb, Mid-Side Decoder, Sample Delay, and Dither.

For more information, please visit mhlabs.com.