RND Portico 5043 Comp/Limiter & 5042 True Tape Emulation

Text: Greg Walker (5043 review) & Andy Stewart (5042 review)

5042 ‘TRUE TAPE’ EMULATION & LINE DRIVER

My first reaction upon seeing the Portico ‘True Tape’ emulator – and the rest of the Portico range for that matter – was that it seemed nowhere near as ‘dinky’ as I had imagined it to be. The units are far slicker and better built than pictures imply – altogether more substantial both in weight and strength. What I inadvertently discovered after handling these new units for the first time was that I had become a bit of a ‘half rack unit snob’ over the years, without realising it: if a product didn’t stretch across the full 19 inches, I wasn’t interested. And as for third-rack units, well…

But this bias (no pun intended) has been utterly irrational, based on nothing more than the fact that half- and third-rack units don’t easily bunk in with all my other gear – unless I strap two or three together of course (although I still have three RNCs that roll about like homeless waifs, never having been given a permanent home). But with the arrival of the Portico range – and a couple of other, quality, half-rack unit designs already on the market – it may be time we each started building our first half-rack bay (easily done), which would open up our studios (and minds) to a whole wave of gear that’s being built with an economy of scale to improve audio performance without increasing manufacturing and shipping costs. Or am I the last one to realise this?

Rupert Neve’s Portico ‘True Tape’ emulator is, of course, tapeless. It’s not like a Roland Space Echo or a Mellotron; there are no tape heads, transport mechanisms or tape loops of any kind (even though an initial glance across the unit’s controls might have you believing otherwise), just transformer balanced line amplifiers and some other tricky Neve analogue circuits that emulate the saturation characteristics of tape… minus the hiss, wow and flutter that, to a greater or lesser extent, make up the other sonic ingredients of most of the world’s tape machines. The guts of the 5042 consist of two line driving amplifier circuits with transformer-balanced inputs and outputs that utilise some refreshingly old-school components which are actually recognisable, and more importantly, easily repairable. Rows of resistors, capacitors, op-amps and transformers adorn a relatively spacious circuit board, and nowhere (apart from on two separate boards that drive the LED metering) is there the now familiar micro-circuitry which can prove almost impossible for local technicians to repair – in the event of failure, of course – and which often means a unit needs to be returned for lengthy periods overseas to the manufacturer. Further to that, the construction also refreshingly lacks an on-board switch-mode power supply (the switch-mode supply is external, to minimise internal heat and noise, as well as to safeguard against a failing supply ‘frying’ the audio circuitry around it).

AT A PLACE CALLED PORTICO…

As Greg has already mentioned in his preceding description of the 5043 stereo compressor, the 5042 tape emulator is similarly subtle in its influence over the audio driving through it. This is no emulation of a wild, unpredictable or erratic tape machine, but rather an archetypical – almost abstract – notion of what a tape machine has historically been. It doesn’t emulate the sound of a dodgy old Tascam with a recalcitrant noise floor and an erratic pinch roller rubber. Nor can the unit really lay claim to sounding like a Studer (although perhaps it feels closer to an A80 MIV to my ears than other machines, but that’s a bit of a speculative stretch, to be honest). There’s nothing about the 5042 that emulates the latent fear of the tape tearing in half as it spools at breathtaking speeds (á la an Ampex ATR100), nor does it have the rock ’n’ roll punch of an MCI. The 5042 is not wholly like any of these machines, but what it clearly emulates is something that all of them possess to some degree, and that’s a characteristic ‘head-bump’ (as it’s always been affectionately known). This characteristic low-midrange boost, intrinsic to the sound of tape machines of all shapes and sizes (which is basically the mechanical side-effect of tape/head interaction) is nicely emulated by the Portico the moment you ‘engage the tape’, as it were.

What’s nice about the 5042 is that not only has Rupert Neve designed the unit to emulate the sound of a tape recorder (albeit a somewhat idealised one), he has also built in certain ‘mechanical’ outcomes reminiscent of a tape machine. For instance, when the input/tape level buttons are pressed, which switches the LED meters from input level to the measure of faux recording levels, nothing shows up on the meters unless the ‘engage tape’ buttons are also activated. This will probably confuse some people initially, but it follows the mechanical logic of a tape machine that wouldn’t register level on tape if the unit wasn’t in ‘record’. There are also two buttons that switch the ‘tape machine’ from 7.5ips to 15ips, which has very subtle effects on the top end and more obvious effects on the bass frequencies.

The 5042’s functionality is actually quite simple. There are two basic controls on the unit (per channel), the first knob being an input Trim. This is effectively the calibration knob – an incoming signal of 0dBu lights up the first ‘lineup’ LED on the meters when the Trim knob is set to 12 o’clock. This is where Rupert suggests (in the manual) you should set your incoming signal peaks, to illuminate this first LED. Initially this is a little odd for someone used to lining up a tape machine where VU meters typically display 0dBu over on the right hand side of the needle’s trajectory. Seeing only one LED light up on the far left of the meter instinctively felt too low to me…

The second, larger knob controls the ‘tape saturation’, and this only affects the sound when the ‘engage tape’ button is pressed (illuminating red). Interestingly, although this knob effectively drives the amount of ‘level to tape’, it has absolutely no influence over the output volume of the unit, which again seems instinctively a little odd. Unlike a tape machine, where the volume of an incoming signal would naturally increase if the recording level were raised up, the 5042’s design melds the record and replay gain controls of a tape machine together as one. As you increase the ‘recording level’ to ‘slam’ the ‘tape’, the replay level attenuates the output to compensate so that the overall output remains constant. Again, this is perhaps a little odd at first, but ultimately an elegant solution that allows you the freedom to mess about with tape saturation levels without having to constantly re-adjust the output gain. This also means that you’re only ever listening to the effects of the saturation, not just the ups and downs of level, which can be distracting and deceiving.

Using the unit across a mix, which I inevitably did, given that it’s a stereo device (I wonder when someone will bring out a 24-track version of this type of thing!), quickly saw me departing from the ‘correct’ gain structure in order to get the emulator cranking. As my instinct had already told me, I quickly found that calibrating my mixes to the Portico so that the peaks only lit up the first input LED left me scratching around for more saturation, which I quickly had open to full throttle. Increasing the input gain allowed more saturation potential, although I was initially just testing to hear how ugly things could get when the unit was fed too much gain. It certainly got pretty ugly, producing some really crunchy and clapped out sounds – this might be beneficial to individual instruments at some point, but perhaps not so for an entire mix. Given that I was in the middle of a session at the time of testing, I quickly backed things off until I eventually settled on a sound that provided me with some power in the bottom end while the top end remained almost unchanged.

I’d have to say my gut feeling was initially that this box was almost too subtle for its own good. But as I used the 5042 on several mixes I was eventually reminded that audio gear shouldn’t always be judged by how radical or extreme its effects are. Extreme outcomes aren’t always what you’re after, and a ‘radical’ box is not, by virtue of its wild changes, somehow better value for money than a subtle one. And besides, the effects of recording to tape are nearly always subtle (assuming you’re not intentionally slamming tape for a specific purpose) and most untrained ears and monitoring environments can barely discern the difference anyway. I soon realised, however, that the 5042 was doing great things to the bottom end of my mix, adding power and weight to the songs long before the signal began to break up. Switching the ‘Engage Tape’ button in and out soon proved that these supposedly subtle effects I was getting were actually quite vivid in the mix, once I knew where to listen for them. The compression effect was pushing the bottom end up through the midrange, strengthening my mix in a way that I soon became reliant upon. Disengaging the ‘tape head’ was then like taking a knife to a football, deflating the mix in a way that was not subtle at all. My conclusion: this box works wonders on the bottom end and has some desirable faux tape compression effects that are very addictive once they become obvious.

It hardly needs to be stated that the Portico True Tape emulator is vastly more practical than an actual tape machine – particularly in the hands of those who, through no fault of their own, couldn’t thread up a tape spool if their life depended on it. Of course, it’s not as much fun as a real tape machine either… tape machines are amazing beasts; their presence, sonic balance and depth, and even their smell can be reassuring at times. But the reality is that tape machines need to be used regularly, serviced regularly, overhauled occasionally, aligned daily, cleaned and pampered continuously and regularly repaired with parts that are often are hard to get, impossible to get or expensive to buy. And that’s just the reliable machines! Although I’m a firm believer that recording to tape is of benefit to at least some aspects of nearly any recording you care to contemplate, owning a tape machine is like owning a dog, you don’t just buy it and then move on to the next thing. You have to form a relationship with it, for better or worse. The reality is that most people’s interaction with the mechanics of a recording device these days scarcely stretches beyond the on/off switch. If you’re this type of person (and that’s fine if you are) the Portico 5042 is the ‘tape machine’ for you. No moving parts to worry about, no alignment issues, no head wear… and the reel of tape lasts forever!