The Rupert Neve Designs Portico 517 500-Series compatible DI/Mic Pre & Compressor provides world-class transformer-coupled micpreamp, compressor and DI circuitry, with Vari-phase, Silk and DI/mic blending capabilities.

The 517's mic pre includes 66dB gain, and is based on the Portico 5017 design. The mic pre also incorporates a polarity reverse switch and phantom power. The separate instrument amplifier includes 30dB of gain, a ground lift, variable phase and an instrument Thru connection.

Used as a single channel device for instruments, the 517 can be used to phase align, combine and compress direct and amplified signals. The blend control is used for mixing direct and amplified signals to achieve the desired tonal blend between the two sources, and the variphase is used to minimize or extenuate phase cancellations between the two signals.

Based around a new LDR (light dependent resister) design, the 517's opto-coupler compressor has been simplified to a single threshold control with auto make up gain. In addition to the standard polarity reverse, the 517's vari-phase control may be used to adjust phase incrementally. This control is useful any time two signals derived from the same source are combined.

Rupert Neve Designs Portico 517 main features:

• Frequency Response: Main Output, no load, –0.2 dB @ 10 Hz –3 dB @ 160 kHz
• Noise: Measured at Main Output, unweighted, 22Hz-22kHz, Terminated 150 Ohms. With gain at unity better than –100 dBu With gain at 66 dB better than –62 dBu Equivalent Input Noise better than –128 dBu Noise Factor 1.5dB
• Maximum Output Level: Maximum output from 20 Hz to 40 kHz is +23 dBu.
• Total Harmonic Distortion and Noise: @ 1kHz, +20 dBu output: Main Output: Better than 0.001% @ 20Hz, +20 dBu output: Main Output: Better than 0.002% Silk Engaged: Better than 0.2% Second harmonic
• Crosstalk: Measured channel to channel: Better than –90 dB @ 15kHz.
• Phantom Power: +48 Volts DC +/- 1%