Cranborne Audio Camden 500

The Cranborne Audio Camden 500 is a microphone, line and instrument pre-amp. The pre-amp has a truly very impressive low-noise and low-distortion performance and frequency and phase linearity at all gain settings.

The result is a stunningly clean, pristine and natural-sounding 500 Series preamp module that delivers any source as a neutral canvas that you can paint with analog and digital processing of your choice. But there's more, because if you want a vintage British-style sound character, for example, check out Cranborne's Mojo circuit.

Got Mojo?
When you're looking for a vintage, British sound character, Cranborne has developed the Mojo circuit, which lets you choose two discrete analog saturation types (Thump and Cream) that can turn the Camden 500 into the warmest, fattest and most characterful preamp in your studio. Turn the Mojo knob and make your sound smooth and subtle, punchy and in-your-face - or completely 'out of circuit'. The 'Thump' circuit reminds us of a classic, British preamp. The 'Cream' circuit, on the other hand, has more of the character of a tube preamp. This Cranborne Audio Camden 500 pre-amp gives you the choice!

Transformerless design
Without using the Mojo circuit, the Camden 500 is one of the cleanest, most linear, transparent and natural-sounding pre-amps we've tested here at Klundert Music. With a custom transformerless front-end topology with 68.5dB of gain (read along!), the Camden 500 achieves amazingly low noise and low distortion specifications and also raises the bar for frequency and phase linearity: ±0.7dB frequency response from 5Hz to 200kHz at maximum gain and <2° phase shift at 50Hz to 20kHz. Now that's what we call high-end professional studio performance!

Cranborne Audio Camden 500 Microphone pre-amp features:

• ultra transparent microphone/line/instrument preamp with variable coloration
  
• 3-way input type switch optimizes impedance/headroom for microphone, line and hi-Z source
  
• Mojo circuit with Thump/Cream analog saturation types (bypassable if desired)
  
• maximum gain: mic = 68dB, line = 60dB, hi-Z = 63dB
  
• 48V phantom power switch
  
• 80Hz high-pass filter, 12dB/oct
  
• polarity reversal switch
• 500 series microphone preamplifier
  
• equivalent input noise (EIN): <-129.5dBu, 150 ohm source, unweighted; <-131dBu, 150 ohm source, A-weighted; <-135.5dBu, inputs common, unweighted
  
• frequency range: ±0.25dB, <5Hz tot >200kHz (35dB gain); <±1dB, <5 Hz tot >200 kHz (max gain)
  
• phase shift: <2.25°, 40dB gain, 20Hz-20kHz; <4°, max gain, 20Hz-20kHz
  
• THD+N: <0.0004%, 1kHz, 35dB gain, 24dBu out
  
• intermodulation distortion: <0.0008%, 50Hz and 7kHz, 35dB gain, 20dBu out; <0.0006%, 50Hz and 7kHz, 35dB gain, 15dBu out
  
• Designed and developed in Britain