Designed and built by Mr. Rupert Neve and sE Electronics

A leap in technology… The world’s first HF Ribbon mic

Formany decades Ribbon mics have been used by engineers for theirextremely natural sounding reproduction of source material. The natureof their performance differs greatly from condenser mics, which bycomparison sound very ‘up front’ and lack the harmonic depth of a goodribbon.

Even at the high end of the market, the customaryroll-off of almost all the top end frequencies has always been a majordrawback. The frustration with all ribbons is – depending on the model– little or no performance past
7-10KHz, which is why condenser mics dominate the recording market.

The traditional appeal of the condenser then hasbeen the assumption of consistent frequency response from 20Hz to20KHz. The pay-off of course is that these mics require a certaindegree of circuit board magic to achieve this, since the taughtness ofthe diaphragm – compared with relatively slack ribbon membranes – meanscondensers tend to be more ‘coloured’ in their sound.

Traditionally engineers using ribbons, howeverexpensive, have had to accept their significant limitations or have hadto augment the recording with a condenser mic to capture the highfrequency absent from the ribbon output.

Such compromises have meant that ribbons have never been very widely accepted or used as a first choice for recording.

Not any more!

Rupert Neve’s new custom circuit design now allowshigh frequencies to be captured and output from the capsule for thefirst time ever in pristine detail. Standard performance of the RNR1 isan unprecedented 20Hz to 25KHz – three times the frequency range ofeven the best available competitor ribbon mics on the market today!

More than this, Mr Neve’s hand-wound custom inputand output transformers create huge amounts of headroom and effectivelylower the noise levels by using gain stages to amplify the signal. Theslight dip in the frequency response from 16-25KHz in the RNR1 cantherefore be effectively flattened if required, producing an almostperfectly flat response, way beyond what human ears can perceive. Thisis crucial in making the RNR1 by far the best performing ribbon mic inthe world today.

The RNR1’s faithful reproduction of fine harmonicmaterial across the frequency spectrum results in the unparalleledcapturing of real sound. Indeed its ability to capture modulation frominfinite harmonic frequencies normally masked on any recording assuresits revolutionary status and exemplary reputation.

The future…

Following hot on the heels of the sE Rupert NeveSignature Series Active Ribbon RNR1 will be a large diaphragm tube mic,and a solid-state condenser.

The mics look beautiful, the packaging is second tonone, and their performance will set new standards in the high-endmicrophone market.