Recording - December 2011 - 12

microphone and inline button for smartphone use), I was pleasantly surprised by the owner’s manual, which starts with a very respectable fourpage introduction to what really makes for good listenable audio: clarity, detail, sound staging, transient response, good clear bass... and, the manual emphatically states, NOT sheer sonic power. That boded well, and when I popped the NE700X into my ears, I was pleased as punch to find it wasn’t all hype. Short form: these earbuds sound really good. Lots of clear, focused bass. Exquisitely detailed mids with perfectly balanced vocals and guitars. Lovely, crystalline highs with no hash or spittiness. An overall balance that is trustworthy on everything from classical and jazz to hard rock, with mixes speaking the way they were meant to be heard. They may not fit all ear canals, with their slightly larger-than-usual drivers, but they come with a variety of sized silicone eartips, seal and isolate well, and provide long hours of non-fatiguing listening, because they don’t need to be played loud to sound good! They don’t come with a 1/4" adapter so you’ll have to buy your own. That’s the only gripe I could come up with. If you’re looking for new earbuds for 2012, you should hear what NuForce has to offer. I’m not giving these back!

Readers of last year’s Gift Guide might remember I griped about the Yeti’s wobbly-feeling headphone volume and mic gain knobs. Well, no more: the Yeti Pro’s knobs are all solid, and the headphone volume knob is actually a smooth digital encoder that remembers your last settings and controls volume at the computer, not inside the mic. So: you can get 24/192 audio into your computer with it, and in a studio it stands up well to conventional multipattern mics, whether in mono or stereo applications. Sounds pretty Pro to me!

Korg nano2 USB Controllers
$65 to $75 each; www.korg.com I reviewed Korg’s original nanoSERIES controllers in our September 2009 issue, and they’ve popped up pretty much everywhere over the past few years. The new nano2 controllers offer changed looks and changed feature sets for an improved user experience. The three controllers are still sized to fit in a 13" laptop’s carrybag, can all still be programmed via a computer editor, and are all still bus-powered via USB (the microKEY 37-note USB keyboard, not reviewed here, includes a 2-port hub for expansion with nano2 devices or other USB gizmos). The most obvious changes are to build; the nano2s feel sturdier and more elegant than their predecessors, which were already very nicely designed. The buttons and switches feel less flimsy and it’s easier to read the control layouts. There are some feature changes, too. The nanoKEY2 still has buttons for pitch bend up/down, mod, and octave up/down (backlit and color coded), but the CC Mode button has been replaced with a Sustain button. I applaud this; it was too easy for a small slip to throw the nanoKEY into CC Mode and have it send MIDI Control Changes rather than notes. Some folks will miss the “stack of MIDI Control buttons” aspect of the old nanoKEY, but I feel this change, plus nicer-feeling keys, makes the nanoKEY2 much more playable than the previous version. The nanoPAD2 is probably the most changed from the previous version. It still has the programmable XY touchpad, but there are now 16 velocity-sensitive pads rather than 12, and the Flam and Roll buttons have been replaced by a sophisticated gate arpeggiator and Touch Scale, which lets you play notes by running your finger along the XY pad. You can control scales and arpeggios in any key and a variety of scale types (major, minor, blues, etc.), and tap tempo to match your host’s speed. I missed the ability to sync precisely to the DAW, but the arpeggiator

Blue Yeti Pro
$249; www.bluemic.com The Yeti was reviewed in our last Gift Guide, December 2010; it’s a multipattern USB mic with built-in headphone monitoring that comes on its own heavy swivel base or can be thread-mounted on a mic stand. I found it a very competent performer and the test unit is still in use in our offices. Well, not any more; the Yeti Pro is here... So what makes the new Yeti Pro “Pro”? Several new features, the first of which should leap out at studio owners who love the idea of a high-quality multipattern mic but balk at using a USB mic in a conventional audio rig: the Yeti Pro can also work as a conventional stereo mic, with a 5-pin jack that splits into two XLRs via an included Ycable. That’s right—Blue intends this mic to be put up on vocals, instruments, or as a room mic right along with all your other mics. It has the Yeti’s choice of polar patterns—omni, cardioid, figure-8, and “XY plus 1” stereo thanks to its internal 3-capsule array—and the Yeti’s familiar mild lifts at 1 kHz and 5 kHz. On string instruments, vocals, and as a room mic, my tests were all exceptional; with a good pair of preamps, you can really hear what the Yeti’s capsules can provide, and it’s impressive. Nulls on the figure-8 pattern are good enough to use for vocal/guitar recording, cardioid rear rejection is quite good and off-axis response is controlled, and the stereo mode is wide but not outrageous (the third capsule fills in a bit of center channel to the XY image). USB use aside, this is a mighty fine microphone. In computer use, the Yeti Pro is the first USB mic to offer up to 24-bit/192 kHz conversion, for increased clarity and dynamic range. Can you hear the difference? I sure could; the original Yeti was a fine mic at 16-bit/48 kHz, but the Yeti Pro will spoil you for what a USB mic should sound like. As a stereo room mic to capture audio directly to a laptop or iPad, it’s a marvel to listen to. And the headphone amp is significantly improved to my ears, too.
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RECORDING DECEMBER 2011

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Recording - December 2011

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