FAQ General
Please use our online webshop for placing orders of standard products.
If you want to order a custom product, please contact us by filling out the contactform or by sending an email to Dit e-mailadres wordt beveiligd tegen spambots. JavaScript dient ingeschakeld te zijn om het te bekijken..
More info on ordering can be found on the ordering page.
The best and easiest thing to do is make use of the webshop. You can order the product and take care of the payment online right away.
Or
Before we can send you the invoice, we need your full (company) name, adress, phonenumber and valid VAT number. You will receive the invoice by email and in the email and also on the invoice, there is a direct payment link. You can pay using iDeal, paypal, creditcard, sofort and various other online options. It's also possible to pay by banktransfer. All details will be on the invoice.
We build products to order, we don't stock products. That is why we ask for some patience after your order. Useually the leadtime from order to shipment is about 3 weeks. This also depends on the amount of orders we have at that moment, but we will give you an estimate when ordering.
The DuTCH audio IM series is based around modules and because of that, it’s possible to have a custom-controller to fit your needs. Both 1u and 2u custom units are possible. There are some physical limitations though Please keep in mind that custom products will cost more then stock products.
More info on the IM based custom products can be found here
Please check the custom-products page for more info on other custom-products
Yes, it's possible to order a different color for the frontpanel for 50 euro ex VAT extra. All RAL colors powdercoating are possible. Please state clearly what color you want in the field during online-ordering. Default color is white, black is also possible and will not be charged extra.
We offer a standard 2 year limited warranty on all of our products. In the event that you or a third party has (partly) altered or repaired anything, the warranty will expire, and you will be held responsible for the damages caused by any possible misfunctioning of the product.
We are not responsible for any malfunction of or damage caused by parts that are not produced by DuTCH.audio.
This agreement is governed by Dutch law only. Any disagreement, redemption or any other claim will be judged under Dutch law only.
DuTCH.audio is a small company and we don't stock finished products, so we dont have demo products available. On the other hand, we do have an IM2.1 ready for demo's within the EU. The actual possibilities for this demo depends on the situation and location. Please contact us for the possiibilities.
FAQ Technical
Maximum gain passive: >+24dBu
Maximum gain active gain/MS: +24dBu
Even though it's no problem to run the products at higher gains, we suggest to run at a level of max +20dBu, this will result in the most transparent and clean sound overall.
We are sorry to inform you that this is physically not possible. When you have a IM2.x (so 2 units high) for each insert you will need 4 XLR's, so for 8 inserts you will need 8 x 4 = 32XLR's for just the inserts. Together with the inputs and outputs on a IM2.x makes a total of 40 XLR's. That will simply not fit a 2u backpanel. For a 1u unit with 6 inserts it's even worse.
That is why we use DB25 connectors, since each DB25 basically has 8 XLR's at a fraction of the footprint. An 8 insert unit with XLR would need to be at least 3U high and a 1U unit would simply not even excist. Some people are afraid of more crosstalk with DB25, but this is not true.
DuTCH.audio is an official Grimm Audio TPR cables dealer.
Grimm Audio TPR ‘Twisted Pair Reference’ cables are developed with physics in mind. Their design focuses on high RF immunity and low microphonics. The perfect symmetry of the cross-section and heavy shielding contribute to high RF immunity. Low microphonics is provided by a special interface layer under the shield and other construction details.
TPR delivers the most natural and least coloured transfer available. Get reference quality for a mainstream price.
One DB25 sub cable holds 2 inserts, so for a console with 8 inserts you will need 4x DB25 sub cables. There are 2 different standards for DB25 sub cables, the digital and analog version. The pinout and channel configuration is exactly the same but the input/output (so the XLR’s) are reversed. So if you buy the digital version with 4x male, 4x female XLR, you have to swap all the XLR connectors.
We made a document with info and option, you can download it here.
This image shows the right pinout and connections.
In theory it's possible to have one knob for the blend/parallel option, but we decided to go for a different approach for various reasons. After research with various well-known mastering-engineers, we all agreed that going for 2 controls (1x wet, 1x dry) is the best solution.
Most parallel processing uses one control for blending from wet to dry and uses a potmeter. The blend option we use, uses two separate controls for wet and dry with stepped switches instead of a potmeter. This way you don’t have channel imbalance, easy recall and way better control over what happens to the signal. For instance you can choose to compress the signal and blend in just a bit of dry signal. But you also choose to use the dry signal and blend in a bit of quite aggressive compression. The first steps on the stepped attenuators have 1 dB per step and the last steps have more course steps, the lowest step is -33dB. The off position mutes the wet or dry signal.
DuTCH.audio is the first company in the world offering this kind of parallel processing approach.
There are 2 different versions available for the IM1.1, IM1.2, IM2.1 and IM2.3, the S-verion and the bypass gain compensation (non S) version. Let me explain the difference.
Bypass gain compensation:
The bypass gain compensation has a potmeter and is used to compensate for gain loss when the inserts are bypassed. When you press the 'bypass offset' button all inserts will be bypassed and the gain compensation becomes active. With the potmeter you can compensate for the gain loss with a range of approx -2 to +10dB. This will be really handy for quick level compensated AB'ing between source and master with the press of just one button. The bypass gain compensation can not be used as an active output gain.
S-version (stepped output gain):
The S-version has a 23 steps bypassable active gain on the output with 0.5dB per step (range +/- 5.5dB) or at request 0.25dB per step (range +/- 2.75dB). You can use this to drive the IM output into your AD at the exact gain you want. The gain can also be used to compensate for gain loss when bypassing the inserts, but you have to press two buttons (ins bypass and active gain) at the same time. The gain range is also more limited then the bypass gain compensation.
It's quite easy to label the pushswitches on the units, it just needs a bit of practice. That is why we made this small manual in PDF format on how to do it properly.
Since most units will end up in a mastering environment and as being a 'picky mastering-engineer' myself I take great care in picking the best parts. To give you some examples of the parts used:
- Blore edwards military grade stepped switches
- Sturdy industrial pushswitches (used in airplanes and nuclear powerplants)
- Goldplated neutrik XLR's
- Goldplated industrial wurth DB25 connectors
- Meanwell industrial SMPS with extra regulators and filtering
- Omron hi-sensitive industrial relays
- THAT and Analog Devices opamps
- Panasonic FC elco's
- Wima poly caps
- Resistors with 1% (matched) or 0.1/0.5% (attenuators) tolerance
- Audiophile silver solder throughout
- Powdercoated frontpanel with laserengraving instead of (less durable) printing
Yes, that's possible though it's not always a good idea to just pop in some other opamps. All opamps have their cons and pro's and some of them work great in certain circuits while they sound and behave differently in other circuits. We did a lot of research on opamps and found that Analog Devices opamps like the LT1468 and/or ADA4627 sound the best in the circuits we use. That is why we picked these opamps as our default opamps.
Our consoles are build around passive parts, but some parts are using active circuitry like the active in/output, MS section and parallel/blend option. We make use of high quality THAT chips for that.
In some cases, equipment using vintage design topologies (using transformers) might damage DC-coupled (active) input stages. (we think this is a design flaw) This could occur when the manufacturer is using 'floating outputs'. Capacitive charge might build up and that could discharge with a high voltage 'spike' and that could blow up the precious THAT chips.
How to avoid this?
It's pretty simply and it will ony cost a few cents in parts to fix this issue. The floating output needs 100k 'bleeder resistors' from output to ground. You can also buy a specially designed XLR connector/terminator with those bleeding resistors build in. Google for '100K-CM-TERM'
How do I know if I have a floating output?
First of all, this only applies to equipment making use of vintage designs and so using transformers on the output stage. Please check with the manufacturer, they should know if it has a floating output or not.
