Sound from around The Globe

Violet Design, Ltd is a microphone manufacturer in Riga, LatviaEU, producing some uniquely styled new microphone designsusing time-honored techniques and elements to craft someinnovative products. The microphones are all hand-made inLatvia at their factory and are distributed around the world bya variety of wholesalers. Violet Design, Ltd produces all of theirproducts in their Latvian factory. A photo tour of the facility isdetailed on their website (www.violetusa.com).

In the USA, Violet recently announced that the line has beenpicked up by FDWWorldwide (www.FDW-W.com), ofMiddleton, WI, a sister company to popular pro audio cataloger Full Compass.

Roses are Red, Violets are...?

If Violet microphones have a familiar air about them, it's likelybecause you've seen other microphones on the market thattheir founder, Juris Zarins, was involved with the design ofsome time ago. Much of the talk about Violet Design, at leastprevalent in the US pro audio media, has unfortunately centered on a dispute with that microphone manufacturer,Blue Microphones. Blue, or initially B.L.U.E (which once stoodfor Baltic Latvian Universal Electronics) is simply referred to byits acronym these days, along with its other line, Red.

We can't and won't comment on the validity of either company's position in their dispute, that's not our place aspublishers reviewing equipment, but we try to be friendly toboth companies and not take sides. For the record, VioletDesign, Ltd is an advertiser, and Blue frequently releases newsstories to our readers here on AppleProAudio.com. We areequal opportunity news publishers and reviewers. We will publish both sides of any issue or evaluate either's products.Unfazed by the legal press release battles, when we wereasked to try out Violet microphones, we were happy to do so.If there is one thing we love as much as our Macs (aside fromcool guitars), it's cool microphones.

Going Around The Globe

Violet Design's The Globe was shipped to us directly from thefactory in Latvia and is the first put to the test in our publish-ing company's project studio while still in California,and thencompleted for this review in our new home, located just out-side of the Nashville, TN area.

The Globe is not an entry-level microphone for the beginninghome recording hobbyist, since its price range puts it up therein the lower-end of high-priced, serious studio equipment, with

a $1779 US MSRP (street price isaround $1400 US). That's a prettybig investment, so for the price,it had better sound good.

Outside the Box

The one thing I've noticedabout some of the microphonesthrust onto the market the pastdecade or so since the homerecording revolution reallytook off is that a few manu-facturers are guilty of puttinga $200 mike in a $300 case togive the impression that theyare selling something morespecial than you really are get-ting.

Violet is not guilty of that. I'dsay this box is actually justright. Violet isn't trying to foolanyone with extra fancy packag-ing, but neither did they skimp on thecase. The microphone came in a handsome, deep-purple-colored wooden box with a latch on each side tokeep it shut, and the Violet logo embossed in silver onthe top.

The spherical Globe sat safely on a cushioned pad of cream-colored velvet, covering custom-cut foam designed to helpsecurely house the microphone, top to bottom, and keep itfrom harm's way should the box take a tumble in the studio.Certainly you'll be proud to have it on the shelf, it's a nice lit-tle box, but fancy boxes are window-dressing. A case is ulti-mately for protecting your microphone investment.

Nice to look at, Nice to hold...

The microphone is very beautiful to look at, appointed withrich purple, gold and silver colors that make it look more likesome kind of sculpture at first glance. The unit they sent to uswas meticulously flawless in appearance, and obviously ahandcrafted, quality microphone that was not slapped togeth-er in a mass-production facility. There was not the slightest hintof stress to the heads of the assembly screws; everything wasuniform and perfect in appearance.

Its cosmetic characteristics were so impressive it was sure set-ting itself up for a hard fall if its sound didn't measure up. Itwould be very disappointing to have something so pleasing to

> THE GLOBE MICROPHONE FROM VIOLET DESIGNReviewed by Mike Lawson

look at lose its luster when put to thetest in the studio. But as everyoneknows, looks are not everything,especially when it comes to some-thing as crucial in the recording pathas a microphone.

On the Ball... .

Violet says The Globe, which has aunidirectional cardioid pattern andlarge size dualdiaphragm capsule,”is designed for a detailed and neu-tral sound—with transparent highs,smooth midrange with minimalpresence and close to flat low-endresponse.” So named for its round capsule housing, The Globeis an elegantly simple design, with a multi-layer brass mesh grilldesigned to try to reduce plosive sounds, breath, pop and windnoise, minimize internal resonance, and keep high frequenciesand sound transparency unaffected. The capsule contains a 6-micron Mylar film active diaphragm, with a mixture of gold,tensioned on a brass back-plate There are no pads, so whatyou see if what you get. It is powered by 48v phantom powersupplied from your own choice of power sources, be it yourDAW, solid-state or tube mic-pre, etc.

The Direct Approach

I decided to try it out through a couple of different recordingchannels in our project studio, running the microphone direct-ly through a Pro Tools 002R, then using it with a choice of aGroove Tubes Vipre, an Focusrite Octopre LE, and a FocusritePlatinum Penta, signal paths one could easily find in a homestudio or professional facility.

Using the most direct path, straight into the Pro Tools 002R, Iarmed a track in Pro Tools LE7 on the studio's G5 Dual 2Ghzmachine and positioned The Globe around the 8th-10th fret ofmy recently re-strung Gibson J200 jumbo acoustic guitar,about 10" to 12" away from the neck. Placement of anymicrophone on this guitar is especially important, as its largebody size produces a beautiful tone in just the right spot, buta big booming tone in the wrong one.

As I set the record level, I started to realize that the sound wasreally just amazing. The clarity of this instrument really shinedthrough The Globe, without any colorization or EQ, just astraight, clean signal. It sounded like the guitar sounds. It wasreally responsive, and with the levels slowly increasing, thesound got better. The sound of the guitar through The Globemade me want to play. A great sound always inspires a betterperformance. Nice!

The cardioid pattern wasn'tso narrow that I had toworry about too muchmovement when playing,but it was a good idea tokeep pretty still as to notupset the balance of sound.I'll blame that more on theshape of the guitar than theoverall pattern width, sincethis particular instrumentcan be challenging to record.Positioned correctly, TheGlobe was doing exactlywhat it should do; capturemy J200's natural tone with-

out mussing it up with colors. The J200 is an unforgiving gui-tar if you have old strings on it and are using it to record, butwith new strings and a great microphone, it's a bright and sweetas a guitar can sound. The Globe gave me a natural, vivid reflectionof what my ears hear when somebody else was playing this guitarin front of me with newly changed, naturally bright strings. Theonly thing I was regretting was that I didn't have two of thesemicrophones so I could hear this in stereo. That would have been very cool!

Real Global Warming

If The Globe sounded this good on my J200 plugged directlyinto the mic-pres of the 002R, it could only get better with agood microphone pre-amp. There are few better than AspenPittman's Groove Tubes Vipre. This unit was freshly shippedfrom their factory to my friend James Gabriel, a noted compos-er and arranger, who broke down and had to have a 2nd Viprefor his studio. James kindly lent the unit to us for the review,and it was hard to give it back. The Globe, plugged into theVipre, was as close to the sound of heaven, as I'll likely everhear. I don't want to turn this into a Vipre review, but suffice itto say that when you pair a quality, handmade microphone likeThe Globe into a top-of-the-line microphone pre-amp likeGroove Tube's Vipre, well, you can expect to be very pleasedwith the results. Now the biggest was regret was not havingtwo of each.

The less-expensive Focusrite pre-amps were equally as pleasingto use with The Globe,though anyone would likely prefer thesound of the of high-end Vipre mic-pre if given the choice. Thesolid-state pre-amps needed a little EQ tweaking to get aquasi-similar response to the tube pre-amp, and nevermatched its sultry tone with The Globe, but that was to beexpected. The Focusrite pre-amps added characteristics to thesound overall, but the flatly-set Vipre just took the nice soundof The Globe plugged directly into the 002R and warmed it uplike a toasty blanket, fresh from the clothes dryer.

Other Intended Uses

Violet says this microphone is suitable for vocals, piano, guitars,drums, percussion, strings, and woodwind instruments. I'venot had the chanceto try it on anythingother than guitarand vocals, but Icould see it being avery nice piano, strings or woodwind microphone. I don't thinkit would be my first choice on drums or percussion, but thenagain, I rarely go to large diaphragm microphones first whenrecording those instruments. That's my personal preference,folks. And choosing one's pallet is part of the art of recording.

The Color of Sound

Violet Design's The Globe microphone is a pleasantly airy, vintage-sounding microphone, which may have you comparingit to old classic German microphones used on your favoriterecordings, but the only colors I found were on the micro-phone's shell and its brand name. When I tested it with mybaritone voice, it was quiet, responsive and at once a comfort-able, familiar sound through my headphones. I always use apop-filter with vocals, and though Violet Designs intended forThe Globe's grill to cut down on plosives, etc., its my opinionthat it still requires a filter for best results, so plan on settingone up. Violet Designs does make a special optional filter for it,but it isn't necessary to use theirs, any one will do. Whether onvocals or guitar, this mic through a high-end tube pre was simply fantastic.

I didn't feel the need to make any adjustments to the EQ, andas I was able to do when recording my guitar, I simply captureda flat input signal, leaving me free to EQ tracks later during themix, as it should be. Singing through it, I wanted to croon, Iwanted to go from Bing Crosby to the talking blues styling ofa mid-sixties-era free-wheelin' Bob Dylan. It conjured upthoughts of all kinds of sounds I wanted to try through it, as agreat sounding microphone should do. I can't stress it enough;a great sound should inspire the performer or artist to a betterperformance. The Globe does that. Frankly, if I could have onlyone large diaphragm microphone to record with, I'd be per-fectly happy if it were The Globe.

Don’t Think Twice, It’s More than Alright!

I decided to make a quick demo recording of a favorite Dylansong for this review, to demonstrate the sound that The Globemicrophone captures. The Globe's manufacturers are advertis-ers as stated in the opening of the review, and rather than havefolks think we'd just say something nice because of that, wefigured the proof was in the sound. If we weren't thrilled withthe mics, we would have said so, though we would have prob-ably been gentle about it.

I went with a straight path from The Globe to the Digidesign002R input using a Monster XLR cable, turned on the phantompower and adjusted my input levels after arming a track in ProTools LE 7.3 The results are, in my opinion, very nice. There are

a total of threetracks that werequickly recorded forthis, which wereone vocal track and

two acoustic guitar tracks using the Gibson J200. I used theslightest amount of a large room reverb from Pro Tool's RTASreverb plug-in, about a 15% mix with the vocal during mixing.The guitars are recorded flat and mixed flat. After the trackswere done, I did a quick mix in Pro Tools, and a master using T-Racks (stand-alone) from IK Multimedia (their gentle masterone pre-set, with a boost to the stereo width), then convertedthe AIF file into an MP3 using iTunes. I wasn't trying to do aDylan imitation here, but I do love playing and singing this one,and have been doing it since I was a kid. I just kind of soundthis way. If you like the sound of the vocal (even if you hate myvoice!) and the sound of the guitar, then know that you canget this sound directly into your DAW with this microphonewith no special pre-amps or tricks.

To listen to "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" recorded with TheGlobe visit: http://www.appleproaudio.com/mp3/dylan.mp3

Going Full Circle

The Globe is a microphone that will add sound to your pallet,without coloring your sound. The proof is in the recordings,and this recording is exactly what that guitar and my voicesound like. The custom-shop-like quality of The Globe's con-struction, the wonderful sound and its price range makes it avery good-buy for any studio. I really can't imagine anyonepaying the price for this microphone and, using proper record-ing techniques and decent mike pre-amps, coming away withanything other than stellar results and a smile. The Globe, fromViolet Designs, Ltd, is Rated Excellent by AppleProAudio.com.5 stars out of 5.

For more information and to find a distributor for your country, visit http://www.violetusa.com/

I can't stress it enough; a great sound should inspire theperformer or artist to a better performance. The Globe does that.