Manley Voxbox

[HA_DA_JA]

Toying with the idea of downsizing a lot of external gear and compacting to a couple of nice channel strips.
The Manley Voxbox keeps coming up in the back of my mind as a one of the great contenders for this.
Does anyone have any personal experiences with this piece of gear?
Main recording styles would be RnB and contemporary stuff.
Cheers

[jkhuri44]

I don't have any experience with the Voxbox but on the whole I am against a '1 box does all' approach.
I would rather buy a nice pre, comp and EQ all seperate units.
In fact.....
You already have a nice batch of gear.
Neve Pre's, Tube Tech EQ, Daking comp etc.
Just start making music Dale - LOL.

On the other hand as a hire unit something like the Voxbox is very convenient - 1 x 3ru road case.

some people might argue on the other hand...that all in one boxes minimise signal path, blah blah blah....more pure, blah blah...

i personally dont go eithe rway, if the shit sounds good, then hell...sounds good...why discriminate :P

[ghengis]

Hello,

I quite regularly use a vox box and find it pretty damn amazing. The pre can be super smooth, or you can dial in just a little more gain and drive it a little harder. It tends to have that big sound, reminiscent of typical german valve pres (telefunkens and the like) The EQ is fantastic for tone shaping and just sounds good (think of anything passive) - it won't do surgical.

I run hot/cold with the compressor though. Some things I do with it are really great, and other times it just plain doesn't work. That is of course true for every compressor though. It's definitely closer to an LA2 type compressor rather than an 1176 (being very general here) but still lacks a smidgeon of the smoothness that an LA2 has - I think it is the vactoral thing. I'm no fan of avalon 737 compressors either, I think for the same reason - they feel a little bit forced. I wouldn't put it in the same box as a 737, as it is way better than that - it is a general all round compressor controlling compressor that excels at that, but like the EQ, it's not necessarily a creative sound-designing-type comrpessor. Think general control. The limit/de-esser tends to work reasonably well too. As an all in one box it is pretty damn special though.

Using an M49 into a voxbox, then into an LA2 is a pretty fantastic signal chain for pretty much anything to run through.

cya
Geoff