The SMALLEST MASTERING CHAIN in the WORLD? 

The Song you’re talking about is called Sandstorm

I love the way how that mic make you sound like you about to drop a rap song

I think for this to gain traction it is gonna need some simple metering, balanced IO, and a lower price tag. I ain't expecting it to be under 1k euros but if it were under 2000 euros with those features, and perhaps a selection of 3 bands for high and low boost it would give a lot of the "standard" mastering boxes a serious run for the money. A sidechain frequency filter would also put this on another level. As it stands, an aphex compellor 320 can achieve the transparent feed forward compression with balanced IO, and the fmr rnc holds the crown as the best unbalanced comp of all time, particularly in transparency. Most live peeps could probably use a compellor and a graphic eq to achieve close enough to this for much less than half the cost. That being said, this sound amazing and I want this to continue and I appreciate the work that has gone into this, hand built is not easy either. My criticisms are framed so that this can make the creator financially comfortable because what they got going can really eat at the big names market share if it were a little more feature packed and a little less expensive.

Thank you for including the apostrophe. Massive respect to Stimming and all he does.

OH MY GOD!! I'm so excited by this since seeing it in one of Stimmings review videos. Edit: OK, less excited by it after seeing the video. That's because I am clearly not the target audience. It is a cool concept and it is extremely niche. Stimming solved a problem he was facing and is sharing that with other musicians sharing the same problem. I think he's done a good job at solving it.

I thought that this was kind of interesting. Then I saw the price - 2.799 euro. Not a chance!

Looks like a nice thing, thanks for a review

Those EQs sound wonderful, I can definitely see me using this in the future.

its always good to touch a knob and feel it , music i mean thanks for your insights

this sounds beautiful

Dropping in with the song title as requested. Teapot Enema.

If you wanted to use it for mastering, you could add a small quality passive DI (4 channels) for balanced in and out. Passive because then goes both ways. Using short patch leads to get in and out unbalanced. It would be better for the unit itself to be balanced, even in a live situation. A DJ mixer might not have balanced in but the PA itself or the FOH mixer will. You could run straight out the back of the unit into the FOH without fear of noise (stages, with all that equipment, are electrically noisy places!). If it had balanced in and out I would consider it for my studio just to have a nice and simple bus master analogue channel insert effect hooked up to my interface, for recording and mixing.

its not cheap .. but its worth it, not only in the studio but also for a dj mobile hybrid setup or something .. and yeah, latency is the one awesome point i think despite the fact that everything on the master bus eats up your single core power on a laptop

Sounds like fun, for certain mastering I think you should also have an M/S option, just for the record, any younger recording engineer, DJ or producer can now find the benefits of this very small great sounding unit to enjoy the analog benefits of modern mixing and mastering techniques, on the other hand, 75% of today's producers have never seen hardware equipment like this, except plugins with the same name. Most of them think that mixing or mastering is just 25 plugins staged with all kinds of parameter adjustments in automation formats. Again, a great price for a very, very nice little device. Finally, someone has found a way to easily make something small sound big. :-)

unbalanced jacks is a strange choice for stereo master unit

Wow, pretty cool. But I like the song even more than the box! Thanks.

Thanks!

It has a nice warm sound.

Sounds cool

Give a chance to the attack of the comp. Allmost All the examples, the attack is super fast and the kick and bass suffers. Quite impressive though.

Kinda off point, but my girlfriend laughs out loud at your jokes... Like genuinely. Full belly laugh... Just want you to know that your jokes land.

It would be nice to have metering for gain reduction..

This would be great for like a workstation synth

Yo that song is 🔥🔥🔥🔥 can we get a link when it's done?????

Stimming is a master!

Things quickly went from “if you want more loudness then turn up the trim knob on your club mixer” to now suddenly “you need to be loud because the PA is tuned for loud tracks 😊”

It is very cute. Unbalanced at that price is kind of a deal breaker. As a cool mini field rack it does look like a killer piece of kit. Headroom is a wonderful thing! Your room is looking great. Best regards, Glenn in Rochester, NY, USA Edit: That's a great thought you had about DJ systems. Yes, this looks great for that. I had been thinking that it reminds me of a broadcast processor.

Nice simplicity

Name of the artist and track, please. Sounds really good!

If you have a live Setup, with a lot of uncompressed stuff in it, and want more pressure and be as loud as the Dj before you, its a possible situation to use this.

i have a noob question: .. when i use a monitor controller (passiv) or an active one to control the volume of my active speakers - where should my interface volume knob (main output level) stand? @100% full , 75%, 50%?

Seeing you geek out about FB and FF makes me think you need an API Drum Bus (2500)

2,800 euros is pricey as fawk.

It's a premium product for a pretty niche use case. Having said that if you're playing live production sets without a DAW or laptop this would be essential for getting the LUFs right

You could put together very nice, compact mastering chain with 500 series modules for that price.

i wish it has a tilt eq with vaiable Freq.

snake in the mierder oil ?

It was very good, but yeah, at that pricepoint you are playing with the big boys and need portability to be an issue for it to make sense.

I prefer balanced jacks mainly because then I can't accidently phantom power the unit from my interface and blow something up. But either way is fine since I can just use a balanced jack on the interface side

Instant in this case means Live, as you play you treat your sound in the instant.

Thanks for this interesting video. For the price, it is possible to have a good bus compressor + a SSL fusion.... if would cost 1000 eur, ok.... Yet when it reaches that level of price, you can expect to have a professional tool that looks like it should.

Awesome song and hardware! I love how it fluxes with emotion.

Shouldn’t there be a limiter and the end of the chain? EQ->Compressor->Saturator->Limiter I guess you can always add one, and the club probably already has one

seems cool for apartment living, the unbalanced cables scares me though, wouldn't noise be an issue ?

I am not playing live (yet) and my music is not widely known (yet). Therefore I do not have a use case for this device. But I've seen a video with Martin explaining his own device ... and the use case of his mastering chain immediately pounced me: It's a small relative light device which is important for traveling (the lesser you take with you the better). And it's »all in one« so you don't have to carry many devices. Also in smaller clubs with less advanced sound technicians (or no technicians at all: »Here's your plug ... go!«) and you need to take care for the loudness of your music by yourself. So well ... here it is. 🙂 Actually I don't know any device on the market which can do what this thing does in this formfactor. ( And I am in no way affiliated to Martin Stimming ... 😀 )

nice unit but for 2800e you can get couple good 500series modules or else.

it's an extremely luxurious solution... you could buy a macbook pro m1, have Virtually no latency, a whole production suite including the Weiss/softube stuff, and still have money left over

This is amazing. Exactly the kind of unit for which I'm always on the lookout. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on how this unit would compare to something like Elektron Analog Heat (tech specs aside). It may even be acceptable to compare this to the ART pro VLA II, which you are known for using quite a bit in your studio (tech specs aside as well of course). Price tag is definitely steep, but being familiar with Stimming's work for many years now, a part of me really trusts that this is a high quality unit for which the benefits might not be immediately obvious.

This little thing is cute!

It's called "Dust Wind" I think. Or "Fine Gravel Gust". "Dirt Hurricane?" Something along those lines.

I think the Darude track is called Du Hast.

Hey, you HAVE to post a link to this track you’re testing with. Please.

the microphone is the lewitt 1040?

Presonus Revelator looks interesting for a similar result.

What is the name of this song?! It’s so good!

The price is a little bit too loud. Yes, it's an analog unit, but 2700 is much too high for this piece of electronic.

I wonder how it’d be on drum bus.

i was expecting less than $1k tbh

This is great for live gigs but I would never use it in a studio.

The price of this in comparison to the results of say the SSL Fusion?… I know there’s a size difference… I guess this is about it’s size… unbalanced doesn’t make sense… but for travel it might be good… but, is it enough to satisfy the confidence in what you’ll produce for a master to clients if you was then adding the rest in software? I guess you’d have to try it out for yourself. I liked it’s sound, but is it enough for the price? I’m unsure, but, could be interesting what this company brings in the future as they gain feedback (pun intended).

I really think they could do the unit for under 1k with the same specs. Just not produce them in Germany. Why not start a Kickstarter campagin for that?

how many ms is its lookahead?

don't think you where quite getting the unit. It's mostly made for playing live in clubs and spicing up your signal, it's not so much about being super precise and gainmatching your material. you also never used all the the controls together (EQ+Drive+EQ) to see what it can sound like. should probably be tested with electronic dance music as well, since that's the primary market I'd say.

wait so zero on this unit is louder that's why you're turning it down?

You could get a number of decent 500 series modules for that amount of money, absolutely fucking ridiculous price!

Sandstorm!

I would love to see a review on the Hilbe Mo 67 pre plugin. Not many of us have the ilok to use it and it seems like it’s either a fantastic plug or not worth the $200 price tag. I love your channel! Thanks for speaking the truth about how you feel🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

It's the smallest most expensive summing mixer, but by no means the most expensive summing mixer. Still a very expensive summing mixer.

On the 1:10 it adds that chest pressure.

Hm, I rather buy a Midas Compressor Limiter 522 V2. It costs 158€ right now (new) and sounds very decent.

Unbalanced jacks? Why would they do that?

What is the obvious sign (sonically or idk..) of balanced vs unbalanced unit? I didn't know there were such a audible difference.

Why not just buy the Mixland Steamdriver?

I don't see the point, it's too limiting for a master. Maybe it's good for per-track?

i thought you would say TEOTE by Voxengo, which you should review actually :3 quick disclaimer: i hate Alexy "Voxengo" Vaneev as a person, but i recognise that he is a great plugin developer

sandstorm?

Way to expensive, at this price you can have a full set of Elysia 500 format used and a rack...

In your opinion, can similar results be achieved with plugins?

pak není k tomu ještě jeden modul? zdá se to nějaké divné

Nice solution.....but is there really a market? Acts who can afford this are playing the main stage I guess... ;-)

I'd rather have an extra laptop on stage with a small external soundcard and plugins doing the same thing than pay that price.

3000 eu for that ?????? are you serious??? What a joke. Better save the money for gas right now.

Jacks + unbalanced + external Powersupply is not what you want in a live stage situation ;-)

Limit + COmp + Eqa? zda se to nějaké divné omezim - stahnu natlačím vytáhnu nevím no

Comment for da algorithm Streak count: 47

hahaha the price

What is the logic behind not having a balanced output in such an expensive unit? Sorry, for me, it seems overpriced for the many of us who don't have heavily treated rooms to master in.

2800 eur for this ? no way ...

Nearly 4 grand. Pass. You can build a neve 500 rack for that.

3156 USD we’re talking RND level mastering chain that’s a no for me

First thought I had, why not balanced, who that would be interested in a mastering hardware piece would want unbalanced?.... it just beggars belief.

I'd rather have an apollo

nope

Smallest 🎻 in the world fir the Smallest mastering chain

$3200 USD for a guitar pedal with some outboard gear components? Is this a joke? I recently bought a Prophet 6 for $1000 less than that… I understand boutique builders with development costs, parts, and assembly, but there’s a point where an idea should be scrapped if the production cost is going to be a huge issue? If you want a nice mastering unit in this price point go for the SSL Fusion or SSL Big SiX. For portable performance setups you can buy a UAD Apollo Twin and use their DSP based plugins with 0 latency at 1/3rd of the price. Even for a 2bus mixing setup you could buy (2x) EQP-WA Pultec Clones, (1 stereo) ART Pro VLA II, and (1 stereo) Warm Audio Buss Compressor and you’d still have money left over. Stam Audio and Audioscape are making some nice boutique clones at reasonable prices too. I’m not denying this product is cool as a small portable unit for studio or live use, but the price..

That microphone looks ridiculous :-)

this should cost 300e

Why lock or block a possible DAC upgrade for the consumer or lissener by using a D/A=D/A in the chain !!!!!!!!! This is so stupid unpro

Actually if you have two hands you have above average amount of hands...

This would be cool if it was balanced and wasn't $2800.