Dude, before U blow off other people's products as lame or gimmicky... I can tell you from practical experience while
taping stealth, that clip led is useful. People who have run SBM-1 into the portable DATs can tell you
how invaluable it is as well...when U can just peer into ur pocket and adjust the gain and not have to look
at the levels on ur recorder..
Yes, when it flashes, it does not clip yet. But the idea to use the clip led is such that it flashes occassionally..
I've taped with it, and I've got good levels using this feature. Also, instead of typing tons of technical
mumbo jumbo into one block of text, consider using paragraphs.
We do not use clip lights insted we make a preamp that you would have to run over with a truck before it clip's. Our Sennhieser model (3 wire) has a gain control from 00- db or off to +20 db with a distortion of 0.05% we don't think the clip light on a external preamp tells you anything, because number one the bullistics of the clip light or the way it works, should have a delayed off, so that you can see that it was on in the first place. If your preamp puts out 30 db of gain and you are at clipping I am pretty dam sure your input on your md or hd based recorder that is expecting -20 to -10 db is very much deep into overload. I have measured the product you mentioned and found that the clip light comes on way to early to be of any use. But hey it's a good gimick. I think that real preamps that have phantom power and 70 db of gain should have a VU meter with a clip light, but thats not going to fit into your pocket. We could put a lame clip light in our product but to be honest we would rather make it a sell for a little less $$$$ then bullshit people into thinking that this little clip light will be the answer to all your distortion problems.
We only put in what you need to get the job done and insted of wasting money on extra doodad's that do nothing except add to what I call the "KNOB" factor we give you a clean wide band low self noise very low distortion preamp at a price pretty much anyone can pay for with out selling one of the kids. And we do it with the best parts you can buy. We use switchcraft jacks we use 1% metal film resistors and we hand match all of our film caps so they are with in .05% of each other with our advanced LCR meter. Then when we are done all that I have a program called WINAUDIOMLS every preamp is now tested with this program for noise floor, distortion, frequencey response, and then all of these measurements are compaired with a known good sample to make sure they are with in 1% of each other the levels from left to right are with in 0.1db of each other. All this for $220.00 for a 3 wire preamp that is unmatched in its price range.
Chris Church
-It provides 0db to (not either or) 20db of gain selectable by a knob.
Just for the sake of accuracy, so does the Reactive Boostbox (it's 0-35 I believe). The SP pre is the one with fixed gain settings, which is actually why it didn't work out for me and I had to look elsewhere and thus wound up with the REactive.
Minidisco used to stock the REactive; don't know if it's still in production or not, but it's worked out well for me. That said, nice to know there's another option in the Church product! I searched high and low this time last year and the Reactive was the only one I could find in my price range, so good to know there's some other choices too.
Just to add on, I think Reactive's beauty is also in the clipping led.... Not sure if the
Church Audio has one.... but that led is invaluable in a stealth situation.