Recording - December 2009 - 22

start and end our review of the new Zino phones with an almost unqualified thumbs-up. The Zino is a folding headphone designed for listening to portable music players. It comes with a hard-shell carry case and nothing else, not even a 1/4" snap-on adapter for its gold-plated 1/8" TRS plug. Its 35 ohm impedance and 101 dB maximum SPL mean it gets good and loud even when driven by a very low-power amplifier, making it suitable for almost any portable music player. When unfolded and adjusted to the right size, the Zino’s unusual headband sits just behind the top of the head at a 45º angle rather than straight up or down at the nape of the neck. This works okay in practice, but strenuous movement can cause the Zino to slip backward out of alignment. I broke in the Zino with about 36 hours of continuous highlevel music to get the drivers in good fighting trim and then listened to a variety of music, from classical and jazz to heavy rock and electronica. The Zino really does provide the Ultrasone listening experience in miniature; everything was larger than life, with a floaty spaciousness that you just don’t get with standard earbuds. They’re not sealed, so expect to share what you’re listening to with everyone who’s nearby. If you’ve been curious about the Ultrasone sound and wanted an inexpensive headphone for day-to-day use that lets you experience it for yourself, the Zino makes a very affordable alternative to Ultrasone’s professional headphone lineup.—MM I won’t lie and tell you the SubDude will eliminate every rattle and vibration in your room; such things are subject to your room’s construction, treatment, and the items contained therein, as well as your overall music listening level. Instead the SubDude is yet another substantial piece of the room treatment puzzle. My room is decked out with bass traps, ceiling clouds, firstand second-order reflectors, and speaker isolation pads. But it’s built on a concrete slab, and when I kick in the sub for playback, you can feel it in my desk, on my floor, and hear it in my baseboard heaters. Adding the SubDude has lessened the resonance in my desk (in all fairness my sub is right in front of said desk) and virtually eliminated the vibration in the floor and the metal heaters; unless I get nuts with obscene listening levels, I can place my hand right in front of the sub on the floor and feel nothing. This has added improved clarity and punch in my subwoofer’s low end, and also allows me to get a few more dB of clean bass volume in my mixes. It’s true that room treatment accessories are not as fun as a new compressor or microphone, but in most cases they are much more essential than the gear. The great news is that if you are a sub fan, then for just under $50 you can easily add a SubDude!—PV König & Meyer 21105 Counterweight $33.95 (street); www.k-m.de Everybody sooner or later has to deal with microphone booms that have a little trouble staying up. Maybe the microphone is too big, maybe you’re trying to extend the boom a little too long. Either way, all you get for your trouble is a lot of sarcastic comments about Viagra from the performers. What you need is a counterweight, and König & Meyer now sells a counterweight that fits their stands as well as a variety of cheap Asian-made copies as well—anything with a 15mm tube will fit. Black Audio Devices made a fancier counterweight many years ago, but they’re not around any more, so buy the K&M and say goodbye to jokes about microphone dysfunction.—SD Latch Lake Xtra Boom $75 each (all 3 sizes); www.latchlakemusic.com The Xtra Boom is a boom that bolts onto the side of an existing microphone stand, allowing you to put two booms on a single stand. The clear and obvious application for this is for guitar and vocals—the lower boom for the guitar and the upper boom for the vocals. In a lot of live situations where you have to work fast, the sheer improvement in setup time is enough of a win, but even in the studio it consolidates things, makes them neat, and makes it much less likely that someone will trip over a microphone stand in the mess. It’s also a remarkably useful thing for drum kits, where you may have one stand being used for overheads as well as for a couple of spot mics as well. I’ve also used it for vocalists who require a near and distant mic for them to perform properly; the near microphone may not even be connected to anything, but it has to be there for them to concentrate. Two booms on one stand make this a very easy configuration to set up, and if one mic moves inadvertantly, the other one does as well. They’re available in 12", 18", and 24" lengths, although I think the 24" one is the most versatile. Since they all cost the same I’d suggest the longest one. Any time I need to put more than one microphone into a small space, I reach for the Xtra Boom.—SD Auralex SubDude $59.95 Retail, $49.95 MAP; www.auralex.com The SubDude is a new product from the sound control engineers at Auralex. Its sole mission: bass control. The SubDude is essentially an extension of Auralex’s popular MoPad line of speaker isolation pads (reviewed August 2003). While the MoPads live under your studio’s monitor speakers decoupling them from your studio desk, meter bridge, speaker stands, and so on, the SubDude lives under your studio’s subwoofer and helps reduce and eliminate vibrations and secondary resonances which travel through your floor. The SubDude consists of a 15" x 15" x 2.5" Ozite-wrapped platform with a pair of brick sized MoPads for feet. If you’re not familiar with it, Ozite is similar to the grey carpet material popular on many equipment racks and PA speakers.RECORDING DECEMBER 2009

http://www.k-m.de http://www.latchlakemusic.com http://www.auralex.com

Recording - December 2009

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