John Stanley
19 November 2024
4
Wrote the following about NewHank Level One Limiter
I think this is a unique product at its price point. We need it to protect the loudspeakers in our village hall, where we have given hirers the ability to connect their phone / laptop to the installed powered speakers through a fly lead with a 3.5mm jack.
I've just received the product and not installed it yet, but I've tested it, and it looks to be able to do the job.
My test software says the limiter Attack is 5ms, Release 1500ms. I think the attack will be fast enough to protect our speakers. It appears to have zero latency, which means it will be OK for use with microphones and live bands as well as recorded music. When the limiter kicks in the sound quality is still good, so it should be fine to use it in our hall. Output level is high enough to feed the line input of our speakers.
Adjusting the level according to the instructions doesn't work, because the 'level' adjustment affects the limit. I think I'll have to adjust the level settings first so the output level is right for the input level of the speakers, and then adjust the limit setting so it activates to protect the speakers. The need to adjust differently from the instructions is why I've given four instead of five stars. Perhaps I've got this wrong, but for me the limit has to be the last thing you adjust, because you can only do that when you know what the actual peak level is.
The lovely security and padlock is a nice idea - but we have some creative wannabe sound engineers hiring our hall, and in the end they can climb up and plug their own cables directly into the speakers, so the security is only as good as the weakest link.