Recording - September 2019 - 14

REVIEW
Whitestone Audio
P331 Tube Loading Amplifier
'blend' between the sound of lifted frequencies passing through the tubes and
a 100% unscathed input signal."]
In use, it will either fit a track or it
won't. Every now and then, one of these
Lift settings offered just the right amount
of low or high frequency enhancement
that a song needed, eliminating the
need to reach for an EQ.

XFormer

You can choose to use this unit in its
default transformerless state, or you can
send audio into an output transformer
and select between two different modes
of transformer loading.

Boost-Cut-Gain

There's a 'clean' output gain stage for
boosting or cutting level at the very end
of the signal path if you need to. It's set
up in 1dB increments, and also includes
a three-position Resolution switch to back
down the signal a further 0.25dB or 0.5dB
if you need that level of control. Here, I
would have preferred a variable knob as
opposed to the fixed toggle option.

Mastering Room

One thing I learned is that nearly
every P331 control offers a certain element of unpredictability. You really have
to experiment and see what settings
are going to work on any given song.
Something that worked really well on
one track might actually make another
track sound worse, or too different.
For example, I had a mix that came
in really warm and overly thick-it didn't
strike me as a good candidate for this
unit. However, after correcting the mix
with EQ before hitting the P331, the
unit worked wonderfully to help prevent
things from getting too sterile.
I also mastered a modern rock Foo
Fighters-esque single that had no technical problems and sounded totally acceptable. However, I knew that the band had
recorded it themselves in their project studio, and that the mix engineer was fairly
robotic in his work and leaned heavily
on drum samples and amp simulators.
14 RECORDING September 2019

Again, it sounded totally fine, but had no
edge or character to it-it was just a little
too clean and clinical. Using the P331, I
was able to dial in just the right amount
of character to make the song sound
more appropriate for the genre, and the
band approved it on the first pass.
The P331 is great at adding the things
I generally love about tube equipment,
but without the typical negative characteristics such as killing drum transients
and being too slow-sounding.
If you have a tube EQ or compressor
that you think sounds good set flat, and
you don't actually use any of its controls,
then the P331 might be perfect for you.
I connected the unit to an insert point
on my mastering console, which has a
wet/dry blend control, and it proved
really useful at times; as such, I think a
built-in wet/dry mix control would be a
great feature on the P331.
I'm a mastering engineer, so I would
have preferred to have ganged L/R controls on the P331. That said, I concede that
since this unit is also designed for tracking,
I can understand the dual mono configuration having its uses in that scenario.
One other nitpick I had is the functionality
of the clever but tricky momentary contact
switch that changes the auto-padding between pre, open, and post. I found myself
wanting to toggle between pre and post,
but the open position falls between them,
so the level changes dramatically for split
second as open mode is engaged. Not a
deal breaker, but I did make note of it.

Mixing

As mentioned, in use the P331 is very
subtle in nature and I would suggest giving the unit pride of place in the center
of your desk, where you can focus in
accurately and hear all the subtleties in
your ideal listening position.

Conclusions

Overall, I really loved the P331 and
I ended up using it on more tracks than
I expected. I should also note that for a
tube unit, the noise floor is very low. It's
hand-built in the USA, and from the moment I picked up the box I could tell by
the weight of it that this was an extremely
solid and quality unit. Plugging it in
more than confirmed my assumptions.

Manufacture's Note:

Whitestone wants our readers to know
that that an upcoming firmware update
(one of the advantages of being digitally
controlled) address both stereo linking/
ganging of the P331's controls, as well as
the volume jump when toggling through
the Pre, Post and Open options.
Justin Perkins (perkins@recordingmag.com)
is a mastering and mix engineer who
owns and operates Mystery Room
Mastering in Milwaukee. Learn more at
www.mysteryroommastering.com.

Price: $4999
More from:
www.whitesoundaudio.com

After Justin put the P331 through its paces in mastering
for a few weeks, I was eager to get the unit into my own
BY PAUL VNUK JR.
studio for some mixing duties. The two words Justin used
above, 'subtle' and 'unpredictable', are totally appropriate.
For those reasons alone it makes a great choice on the master bus, especially if you
work primarily in the box. This is not a buzzy, fuzzy tube saturator. As Justin said,
it's more akin to running your mix back through the tube input section of an old tape
machine, or a tube compressor with the controls set flat.
Tube-subtle is good on the 2-bus because it can do its duty as an anti-sterility machine, but still keep your mix sounding like your mix, with no gimmicky, heavy-handed
artifacts that only get in the way of the mastering engineer's process.
On the subject of unpredictability, it's not that the P331 will or won't work on a mix,
it's that some of its processes and settings may do different things and be more or less
useful than others when moving from mix to mix and genre to genre.
For instance, I still can't tell you concretely what Clean or Bloom actually sounds like
or what they do to the signal, and it's almost the same with the two XFormer settings
and the Pre and Post auto-pad settings. The techie in me 'gets' what they should be
doing in theory, but they don't always behave in a prescribed manner, and sometimes
I simply just like one better than the other. All in all, the P331 sounds so good and hi-fi,
I am ok with it having a mind of its own!

http://www.mysteryroommastering.com http://www.whitesoundaudio.com

Recording - September 2019

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