Manley HP-100 User Manual

Congratulations on the purchase of the LANGEVIN STUDIO HEADPHONE SYSTEM. With
this station you will be able to offer musicians a better sounding headphone amp than most major studios
and be able to provide some significant improvements over basic stereo cue boxes or any other headphone
system we know of. We subtitle this unit "THE MORE ME BOX" because this is possibly its most
important feature. Along with the typical cue mix or the control room mix, the engineer can offer each
musician a fader dedicated to their own instrument. Experience teaches us that each musician always wants
to hear more of themselves and that trying to meet this demand with several musicians and with a few aux
sends is quite a mind bending challenge. As long as each musician's headphone is plugged into a separate
station, each can have their own custom mix within arms reach. This frees up the engineer to concentrate
on recording and getting the best sound. It can free up console aux sends so that they may be used for
effect sends. It also tends to allow the producer to concentrate on perfomances because the musicians
monitoring needs are met quickly and easily.

While we strongly suggest that musicians not monitor too loud and possibly damage their hearing,
we know that many musicians will tend to listen to incredibly loud headphones while playing. Most
systems will distort or be gross sounding at these levels causing even more hearing damage, fatigue and
headphone damage than this system will. It is designed to sound good at all levels from quiet to extremely
loud with headphones of all impedances or efficiencies.

The communication features and options are incredible. This inexpensive headphone system has
more and better communication features than any commercially available recording console or other
headphone system. There are three main concepts.

1) The ability that allows the producer to mute the music and talk or to talk within the music mix.
The former is most appropriate during tracking with several loud musicians playing when the producer
needs to stop a bad take. This is named
coaching and is called

TALK.

INTerupt. The latter is more appropriate for vocal overdubs and

2) The ability to talk to individual stations. This can prevent embarassment within a group, or allow a
producer to only be heard by the conductor.

3) The ability that allows the musician to talk and/or get the control rooms attention even if their mic
is off during a playback or the room is dark. There is a built-in mic on the station with a button for
"TALK". Pushing the button can light a LED (one per station) in the control room and break into the main
monitors (if selected).

The Player can mute the headphone amps. The MUTE switch can be thought of as a "PANIC
BUTTON" for those who have ever experienced sudden feedback or a weak signal suddenly "cutting in".
These accidents generally mess with the mood and the hearing of the players. The Mute also functions to
mute each side of the headphones. Primarily this feature is for musicians who wear only one side of the
phones. This is common with vocalists, brass and string players and allows them to hear acoustically what
they are producing. Functionally pushing the MUTE button cycles from ON (GREEN LED) to MUTE
(RED LED) to LEFT MUTE to RIGHT MUTE (RED + GREEN = AMBER) and then back to ON.

Audio FADERS are used rather than rotary pots for the input levels. This gives obvious visual
cues to the user. The MONO inputs PAN. The stereo inputs switch to MONO, SIM and STEREO. SIM is
Stereo Image Modelling and creates a stereo image in the phones that is closer to speakers and reduce the
difference the musicians hear when they return to the control room. This circuit slightly boosts the low and
low-mid frequencies and makes them more mono. This is usually the best sounding setting with a stereo
mix fed into the stereo inputs.

Tone controls. These are specially designed for headphones and musicians. The BASS control is
designed to musically raise the loudness of the instruments BASS and KICK. The TREBLE is designed to
raise the level of the HIGH-HAT and add a pleasant airy quality to VOCALS without harshness or
hardness that often happens with headphones. Another design parameter was to help minimize differences
between the most common models of headphones for studios. Technically, these are very gentle slope shelf
EQs set to higher frequencies than commonly used. Center position is flat and very gradual near 12:00 on
the control.

Individual external power supplies. These external supplies are not "wall warts". External power
supplies create less problems, such as hum, in the stations. They reduce the weight and size of the stations
making it easier to accomidate mic stand mounting. By having individual power supplies a studio does not
have to rewire to have stations in iso-booths. It also increases system reliability because when a central
power supply is a problem it is a central problem. Central power supply schemes also use the audio cabling
and connectors which is not a recommended practice for valid electrical reasons.

Both 1/4" jacks and multi-connectors offer versatile wiring options. Balanced audio inputs and
control logic combined with the recommended wiring schemes prevent the possibility of ground loops and
hum. These inputs are fine with either balanced or unbalanced signals and +4 or -10 signals. Low noise
circuits are used with plenty of gain range.

4 headphone jacks. While the unit was primarily designed with having a separate headphone
mixer for each musician there are many situations where several musicians can share one station, such as
harmony vocals. We could not fit a separate volume control for each headphone jack in the unit nor do we
like the loss of damping factor and reliability that these attenuators cost. An external box with 100 ohm to
500 ohm 5 watt pots are cheap to buy or easy to build if needed.

Overload indicator (O/L) flashes 3 to 6 db below clipping and typically 10 db below audible
distortion. However in practice when it is flashing the volume should be reduced.

The stations provide 3 audio outputs at all times. Two are used for a check of the headphone amps
outputs so that the control room can hear exactly what the musician has mixed or messed up. The third line
is the built in mic output and is not affected by the talk switch.

Simple, intuitive operation. No training or expanations to the talent is usually necessary.

Just label the faders. Not all headphone systems are this easy to use. Very few musicians want to be trained
to use your studio.
As LANGEVIN is the solid state branch of MANLEY LABS one can expect the unusual degree
of high quality parts and con struction. Th ere are very few manufacturers of pro audio gear using th is level
of high quality parts. All Op Amps are Burr-Brown OPA2604 FET type running with 21 volt regulated
supplies and were purpose designed for high quality, clean audio. The faders and right hand pots are
ALPS and the pan pots are conductive plastic Bournes. Signals pass thru only one capacitor per phase and
these are polypropeline. Resistors are all 1% metal film and most are 1/2 watt. The Power Amps are
monolithics, are very new and designed to provide 150 watts peak and 60 watts continuous into 4 ohms per
side. Because headphones usually require volts rather than watts, we limit the supply current appropriately.
These amps are designed to never produce any click or thump or DC during power-up or power-down and
thus will damage fewer headphones. They are fully protected against shorts, over heating and power supply
faults. Best of all they sound very good (for solid state) and will drive headphones loud enough for
drummers. These amps will drive speakers to reasonable volumes if needed, however watch out for o ver­heating (they will simply mute) and keep in mind that the stations were not designed for full power sine
wave specs below 40 ohms.

Wiring requirements are only as much as needed. Different types of studios may only need or
want certain functions. Multi-connectors are not needed for a basic system. The following sections give
some of the wiring scenarios from the simplest to the most comprehensive. The simpler set-ups are typical
of how many major studios are presently operating. Most of them are using one or two stereo power amps,
lots of speaker cable and those boxes with a few volume controls. Each part of such a system will work but
always sounds poor. They could work the way they are used to and improve the headphone sound for little
cost if they gave more of a damn about the musicians performance needs than their lounging needs.

INSTALLATION

The most basic system only requires 2 lines from the control room to the studio. It is possible to
use spare mic lines with the appropriate adaptors. Patch the consoles Cue Mix to the mic lines. In the studio
patch from the mic lines to the stereo input channels. Use the console's TB (Talk Back) to talk to the talent.

Sometimes you have to set up a "Room Mic" or dedicated mic so that the talent can talk to the control
room.

A better method is to use real line level cabling rather than mic lines because the mic signals are
quite low in level and the above technique may tend to crosstalk the cue signals into those valuable mic
signals. Do not use any speaker cables for line level signals because they are rarely shielded and will hum
rather badly. Do not use the power amp outputs to drive the station. At the best it will sound lousy - at the
worst you will blow up the inputs of the station.

If you have more lines available you can send more channels to the station. First choice would be
a channel dedicated to the musicians own mic. The best point to take this from is the output of the track
you are recording onto. That way they not only hear the mic but also the playback from tape. "MORE ME"
is a common request and in itself is an improvement over typical cue systems.
The next variation is a simplification of the first two methods that is useful when the talent is
likely to use several tracks or work on several songs. Use the main stereo mix for the headphone station's
stereo input. Then use a mono aux send that is just the new tracks to be used for the "MORE ME" channel.
The advantage is that the stereo mix is only one mix to set up, not two. In general the stereo mix that the
engineer is hearing will be better balanced than the CUE mix. The artist usually is happy with this as long
as they can have extra "ME" to zoom in on their performance.

The next variation is even "MORE ME". Add another line that represents the mic (after the mic
pre). Maybe a stereo feed of their reverb would be a nice touch. Have you got more lines available? Some
singers like the bass and kick on faders. The bass tends to help with pitch while the kick helps with
phrasing. Now they almost gotta be happy. The only complaint should be either the air conditioning or the
cigarrettes.

If a few musicians require phones and they can compromise a working volume simply plug up to
four headphones into the station. If you expect that they need different volumes you can use a commonly
available and cheap box with individual volume controls. Better yet is to use several stations. The engineer
can send each station as many inputs as there are lines available. Again a better option is to use multi­cables to link stations. This saves on lines needed and simplifies the set-up. This method gives each player
their own mix, volume, tone controls etc.

In larger set-ups some consoles have more busses than are usually required. One example is with
an SSL console. With 32 busses and 24 track machines many engineers could use those last 8 busses to
feed the stations. This is one easy way to pre-mix any number of tracks down to 8. The downside is that the
Talk-Back does not send to these outputs unless the Slate button is pushed. A better variation is to use 6 or
7 pre-mixes and one channel for Talk-Back. You can access this signal from the Cue outputs. You may
want to dead-patch ahead of this point so that the stereo cue send is available for effects. Then again, you
could set up a pre-mix on the CUE mix and TB will be there for free and n o tricky patching is required.
These types of set-ups are typical with many consoles and a little experimentation goes a long way.

Most studios are pre-wired to accomplish any of the above set-ups and if not the changes
hopefully are minor and easy. Anywhere from 2 to 24 extra lines that are run from the patchbay to the
studio will do the trick. Some may elect to have one or more "25 way D" panels in the studio and only use
multi-cables. This is a neat and organized style and a good way to wire a new studio. It may be difficult for
an existing facility but not all that necessary because the 1/4" inputs are pretty easy to deal with.

The communication features built into the stations have not been addressed yet but if you can
access 12 or more lines between the studio and control room much is possible. With most comprehensive
systems some thought and work is involved in a complete installation in order to get everything the system
is capable of. The following examples are for more advanced applications.

ADVANCED INTALLATIONS