This new EQ is based on the same passive EQ sections as the Massive Passive’s Low Band and High Band and shares most of the same components and circuit layout. The Langevin Mini Massive is smaller at only 1U high and about half the price and includes some new features, refinements and a new level of clarity fit for mastering at its best.
Hutch re-visited the 4 lowest shelf settings, and the 4 highest frequency shelf settings, plus added new higher Q bell shapes for the 4 highest frequencies. This gives even more opportunities for Pultec-like fatness and beyond in the deep lows. The new high frequency curves are designed for air, sweetness and sparkle.
Compared to the Massive Passive, the toggle switch that selects between Bell and Shelf, has become a 3-position switch, to introduce the new higher Q Bell curves on the 4 highest frequencies. These features give the Langevin Mini Massive even more power and flexibility to achieve that elusive big round tight bottom and silky atmospheric top.
The Langevin Mini Massive uses 4 of the new Manley Rapture® Amplifiers for gain. These came about in the long search for the cleanest and most musically involving gain stage we could get and were originally intended for a cost-no-object digital / analogue converter. These are further augmented by both series and shunt power supply regulators, to provide a refined low noise power supply.
Like the Massive Passive, huge headroom is available and the Langevin Mini Massive will output +30 dBv balanced into 50 Ohms. And rather than using unstable cross-coupled outputs to drive balanced or unbalanced loads, the Mini Massive can accommodate balanced, or unbalanced +4, or unbalanced -10 loads, and each one is always driven optimally. It plays well with others.
And for those who would prefer the sound and ease of interface that transformer-coupled outputs provide; we have made the same transformers as used in the Manley Massive Passive a stock item here in the Langevin Mini Massive EQ.
These can add a subtle degree of warmth and smoothness when used in the signal path. A 3-way toggle IRON switch on the back panel switches the transformers into the circuit or bypasses them or forces them into a more vintage-like flavour for even more fat and aggressive colours.
Of course, for those who want a Mono 4-band EQ only need to patch the output of Channel 1 into the input of Channel 2. The low band ends at 1K and the high band begins at 560. Shelf frequencies still go that far and still offer dramatic curves.
The Langevin Mini Massive is the EQ for those who consider the Massive Passive too big, too expensive, or too coloured or maybe not the first choice for extreme lows or extreme highs. The Massive Passive was designed to be a tube EQ with character and with the creative potential of forgotten passive techniques.
The Langevin Mini Massive is a clean, lean machine, with the same EQ performance, and then some, where we wanted it most. And like the Massive Passive, it cannot be the one EQ appropriate for anything and everything (there is no such device), but it will be the first choice EQ for most things.
