The TC Gold Channel is a dual-channel mic pre-amp with comprehensive digital processing. Limited stock available at an end-of-line clearance price. The Gold Channel was £1468 inc.vat. DV have a limited quantity of Gold Channels to sell for £899 inc.vat and can also offer the Gold Channel bundled with a matched pair of sE4400A microphones with FREE Dual Pro Pop Shields for £1499 inc.vat which is probably the best value dual mic pre and microphone bundle in Europe.
Hugh Robjohns (SOS, March 1999) comments:
The Gold Channel contains two high-quality analogue input stages (capable of handling either microphone or line-level signals) with all the usual facilities, such as pads, polarity reversal, high-pass filtering and phantom power. After the appropriate signal conditioning, however, the inputs are converted to 24-bit digital audio signals for all further processing. In true TC fashion, every parameter of the machine can be stored in the 100 user memories and recalled at the press of a button, including all the analogue input settings (gain, pad, filters, phantom power and so forth). There are also 100 factory presets to get you started, with a usable assortment of generic and specific configurations to suit most applications (including many identified by specific classic microphone model numbers!).
The digital signal processing is both comprehensive and familiar. The machine provides an impressive range of selectable facilities, including an expander, a compressor, a de-esser, a dynamic equaliser, TC's own 'Digital Radiance Generator', an RIAA replay equaliser, a pair of MS matrix encoder/decoders, and useful time-alignment/delay facilities. The elaborate multi-band dynamics facilities of TC's Finalizer models are missing, but little else is! The best bit of all is that although the A-D and D-A stages are restricted to 44.1 or 48kHz operation, the rest of the digital signal path is capable of supporting 88.2 and 96kHz processing (albeiThe Gold Channel is a dream to use. Once the user is familiar with the TC interface and the way in which the various LCD menus are structured, setting the unit up and editing the processing parameters is child's play. All the information you need is presented clearly and simply -- for example, adjusting the EQ is assisted by a plot of the frequency response, and a transfer curve is shown when manipulating the various dynamics functions.
The ‘soft compressor’ processing mode provides conventional controls for threshold, ratio, hard- or soft-knee, attack and release times, output gain and the side-chain input (itself or the other channel). The ability to use the second channel to process the side-chain signal opens a whole world of possibilities in frequency-selective compression amongst other weird and wacky ideas! The alternative compressor mode -- 'vintage' -- is rather simpler and only presents controls for input drive (instead of threshold), output gain, ratio, attack and release times. This makes the Gold Channel generally a much faster and easier device to set up, if somewhat more crude! If the machine is set up with the same processing option in the same place on each channel, the units can be stereo-linked and adjusted in unison.
The expander options are similarly well specified. The Easy Gate mode provides threshold, 'max damping' (ie. range), ‘mode’ (fast or slow options which effectively set the ratio between gating or a 1:2 expander), and selection of the side-chain source. The Advanced Expander option offers parameters for the threshold, ratio, attack, hold, release, hard- or soft-knee, max damping, and side-chain selection. However, the side-chain processing goes one better, by including a filter with selectable bandwidth and turnover frequency, as well as a facility to monitor the side-chain while adjusting it.
There are two equaliser processors available. The first is the 'Easy EQ' designed to mimic the classic valve equalisers of yesteryear. It provides top and bottom filters, swept low and mid bands, and a shelf at the top end. The Advanced Equaliser is a far more complex beast with five parametric bands, each having controls for gain, frequency and bandwidth. The top and bottom bands can also be configured as shelf equalisers with slopes ranging from 3 to 12dB/octave. There is also a global output-level control and a soft-clipper function.
In the Tools category, the de-esser provides facilities for selection of the turnover frequency and threshold, along with the usual side-chain and monitoring options. The dynamic equaliser provides parameters for the threshold (with relative or absolute settings), frequency, bandwidth (or shelf option), ratio, attack and release times, and the familiar side-chain facilities once more. The Digital Radiance Generator essentially adds small amounts of second- and third-order distortion, and the only controls provided are a drive level and a positive or negative 'curve' selection (to determine the polarity and audible effect of the induced non-linearity). The RIAA equaliser has a single parameter to define the response as mimicking the curve defined in 1964!
With the signal processing selected and ordered, a metering sub-page on the Edit menu allows the signal levels experienced by each separate processing function to be reviewed as crude horizontal bar graphs within the respective processing blocks, displayed as a graphic. This is an extremely useful facility, as it would otherwise be very difficult to identify the processing module responsible when the machine runs out of headroom!
When all the signal-processing was turned off and the Gold Channel was auditioned as a straight microphone preamplifier, it fared extremely well. It has no discernible character, allowing the sound captured by the microphone to pass directly to the recorder if required. The built-in A-D stage seemed to perform very well too, and certainly considerably better than the input stages of the digital console I was comparing it with, although that is hardly surprising given the price.
As a signal processor, this machine has all the quality hallmarks of which TC Electronic are so proud. It's clean and accurate when required, rich and warm with the Digital Radiance Generator, and so amazingly flexible that any possible combination of signal processing can be achieved quickly, easily and effectively.