Audio Engineering Society (AES) 141 AES Convention
Los Angeles, CA      September 29th through October 2, 2008
Report By Ray Chowkwanyun And Bob Duchan

Little Labs

   Jonathan Little bears a passing resemblance to Don Van Vliet. Did anyone ever see them together? I mean before Mr. Van Vliet passed on. I think it's the goatee and the glasses.

When he isn't impersonating Mr. Van Vliet, Jonathan makes a bitchin' lil' headphone amp called the Monotor (sic). Mr. Van Vliet's background, I mean Jonathan's background is in mastering at A&M amongst other studios. The Monotor with its insane gain is designed to allow a mastering engineer to hear deep into a recording and correct any flaw that may be present. It will reveal everything and I do mean every lil' thing, good or bad. IMHO, more accurate equals better sounding. It is a false dichotomy between more accurate and better sounding. When you think about it, how could more accurate not be better sounding? I mean the most accurate is the original live sound. It's just that some things have been called more accurate when, in fact, they were just more etched.

(Dept. of revelation: I bought one for myself, but Jonathan had no idea I was going to do a write up. No quid pro quo in other words. In fact, I'm listening now. It is sooooo good. I'm using Koss Porta Potty's. Jonathan uses Sennheiser HD600s with Cardas wire.)

The two headphone jacks on a Monotor each has its own separate amp. Plus you can daisy chain a bunch of Monotors together in case you want to throw a headphone partei. Powering the whole show is a monster power suppy. Behind every good sounding component, one finds monster something whether it's the monster caps in Manley Labs power amps or the monster capstan motor in a Studer A80. 

Note well, little brothers, the Monotor power supply is linear and must be manually switched to the correct voltage, unlike a switching power supply.

There's more. There's more.

Redclound. A balanced attenuator pack.
PCP Instrument Distro 3.0. Switchbox for instruments.
Lmnopre. Mic pre. Geez, everyone and his uncle makes one of these.
Pepper. Grand Central Station connects instruments, effects and DAWs.
IBP. Phase tool.
VOG. Short for Voice of God. Close micing of kick drum and bass - without the close micing.
STD Mercenary. You might want to reconsider that acronym, Jonathan. Instrument cable extender/splitter.
Redeye 3D Phantom. Direct box/ Expandable Pre-amp.
IBP. Phase alignment tool.

---> Back to main AES 141 show report homepage.