Designing a Rack Mount Preamp with Colour Pt. 1 (Video) April 11, 2018 14:42

Now that we've wrapped up design on the OLA5 Opto Compressor, I can finally get back to a project I've been wanting to do for a long time: a multi-channel, rack-mounted mic preamp. The preamp will be use the same circuitry as our CP5 500-Series preamp with Colour but with some additional features.

I'm still in the early stages of this design, so I thought I'd share what I've got so far with you and solicit your feedback. I go into more detail in the video above, but basically I've prototyped four new features:

• Direct input
• LINE switch for running the CP5 in line-level mode
• Parallel, dry output
• Second Colour socket

We could fit all of these features in a 1U, two-channel box. But my big question for you is:

Should we do a 2-channel version with more features or a 4-channel version with fewer features?

I'd also love your feedback on the features I've worked on so far.