New Music Gear Monday: Aurora Audio Stinger Mic Preamp/DI

Geoff Tanner's Aurora Audio has been building Neve-like gear for some time, calling upon his years working at Neve itself to not only get the designs true to Rupert's original intent, but to even go beyond.

The company is now shipping one of the more unique products on the market today - the Aurora Audio Stinger Mic Preamp and DI.

The Stinger is truly unique because of it's form factor. It's a channel strip in that it not only features a Neve 1073-style class-A mic preamp and 3 band EQ, but also has a 100 mm fader and 30 LED ladder meter. Add to that a truly unique DI, and you have a product unlike anything else on the market today.

The DI is interesting in that there's actually two of them in the same steel chassis - one that's clean and another that's capable of rich creamy overdrive.

And while on the surface the Stinger seems like a single channel product, both the preamp and DI have their own separate balanced outputs via XLR's as well as 1/4" TRS jacks on the rear panel, so they can be run at the same time. Also unusual in this type of product is the fact that each output has its own ground lift, and the power supply is built right into the solid steel box. No wall wart here!

The Aurora Audio Stinger is priced at a very reasonable $1,595. You can find more info on the Aurora Audio website and the video below.

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New Music Gear Monday: Little Labs Pepper Effects Blender/DI

Little Labs is known for its unique problem solving boxes that more often than not tackle a problem that we might not be aware of initially but come to find out how important it is in our audio chain (a great example being the IBP phase tool). Now the company has introduced a new box that tackles the complex connection environment that electric musicians (especially guitar players) frequently find themselves in.

The Little Labs Pepper is a device with multiple uses. It can act as a blender for direct and effects signals, a direct box or a reamp box, but with a precision and adjustment range that most dedicated boxes don't have. It's made to be the hub that interfaces both hi-Z studio guitar pedals and low-Z studio effects, at both mic and line levels, all at once.

Pepper incorporates a high-quality analog signal path with UTC-style output transformers for mic and instrument level, along with a balanced transformer-less line level out. It also has both pedal and "Pro" hard bypass that can be controlled with a footpedal, and adjustable instrument input load impedance, as well as a "Load-Off" switch just for piezo pickups.

The unit is powered by a heavy duty external power supply and is Mu Metal shielded for quiet performance in both live and studio environments.

The Little Labs Pepper isn't cheap at around $650 street price, but it does what few other devices can do. Check out the video below for a more thorough explanation.

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The Radial Firefly Tube DI

I love tube direct boxes, especially on bass. From the old Simon System (very rare these days) to the Evil Twin (also rare), tube DIs can just make a bass roar like nothing else. Now Radial Engineering, who make what might be the industry standard passive DIs in the excellent sounding JDI, has introduced their Firefly tube DI, which offers a number of unique features (like variable pickup loading).

Here's a video that Sound on Sound magazine shot at AES that gives you a pretty good idea of what the Firefly is all about. I'm really anxious to try it out myself. Beware that you have to sit through 30 seconds of a Focusrite commercial before it gets down to business.

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