Neve’s latest 1073 variant bridges the gap between microphone and computer.
More than 50 years after it was introduced, the Neve 1073 remains the world’s most iconic mixer channel strip. It’s inspired countless imitators, and Neve’s own product range now contains no fewer than 10 different products referencing this trademarked four‑digit number. The 10th and newest of these is the 1073SPX‑D.
Back in January 2018, Hugh Robjohns reviewed the Neve 1073SPX, a single‑channel processor that includes the classic 1073 preamp and EQ circuits in a convenient 1U format. As well as the expected Marconi knobs and Mahjong‑tile buttons that govern its analogue features, this sports a couple of small red buttons with associated LEDs on the top right of its front panel. At launch, these buttons were intended to control an optional digital card that would add AES3, word clock and FireWire connectivity.
In the event, however, this digital card was never released, so although the SPX continues to be a popular way of integrating a 1073 input channel into a modern studio, it can’t talk directly to your computer or other digital gear. And now it never will, because that power belongs to the new 1073SPX‑D. This, in a nutshell, is a 1073SPX with integrated digital connectivity, USB interfacing and monitor control.
More Than Digital
The SPX‑D can be used as a purely analogue device, and in that role, it does everything the SPX can. It thus offers the 1073 preamp and EQ designs in their most fully developed incarnations, with transformers on both input and output, whilst adding modern conveniences such as a balanced insert loop that can be placed before or after the EQ, and a front‑panel combi jack that overrides the rear‑panel XLRs when engaged. However, the SPX‑D also has analogue monitor control features not present on the SPX. These require front‑panel space, so the DI input for electric guitars has been folded into the front‑panel combi socket. A happy side‑effect of this is that DI signals now pass through the input transformer, with the pad switch dropping the impedance from 2MΩ to 200kΩ.
The rear panel of the SPX‑D is quite a bit busier than that of the SPX. Like that unit, it employs an external switch‑mode power supply, but this time it connects using a five‑pin XLR. The SPX’s quarter‑inch insert sockets and XLRs for mic in, line in and line out are joined by two further pairs of XLRs labelled Monitor In and Monitor Out, while the leftmost part of the rear panel sports optical ADAT in and out sockets, a BNC word clock output and a Type B connector for USB interfacing. (Neve prefer this to the current Type C standard for reasons of robustness and long‑term reliability.)
Returning to the front panel, the SPX‑D inherits the SPX’s output attenuator to allow the input side of the unit to be driven harder without overloading its A‑D converters or downstream devices connected to its analogue outputs. This has a push action that cycles the seven‑segment LED meter between three different points in the signal chain. On the SPX‑D, however, it’s joined by two further knobs, which have their own push actions.
As well as its digital connectivity, the SPX‑D has stereo monitor inputs and outputs on XLRs along with a dedicated line output from the preamp/EQ.
Monitor Control
The most important of the added knobs is the rightmost one labelled HP/LS Level. As that suggests, it simultaneously governs the volume of the front‑panel headphone socket and the rear‑panel stereo XLR monitor outputs. A brief press on the button mutes the XLRs whilst leaving the headphones active, but there’s no way to set their levels independently; this is a shame, especially given that Neve’s more affordable 88M interface does have a separate headphone level control. The HP/LS Level knob has a detent at the centre position, allowing you to return easily to a preset monitoring level. However, the headphone amp is seriously pokey, and with modern low‑impedance headphones, the detented position is way too loud for comfortably listening to mastered material.
A longer press on the HP/LS Level pot cycles through four different source options. In the first, the SPX‑D’s Monitor Out XLRs and headphone output simply present the input signal, panned centrally. In the second, they present one of two stereo playback returns from the USB interface, so this is the mode you’d use if you want to monitor inputs through the DAW. The third mode presents a balance between input and playback signals, which is determined by the middle of the three knobs, and it’s this mode you’d use if you want to audition inputs with zero latency whilst also hearing the backing track from the DAW. A fourth mode switches the monitor source to the rear‑panel Monitor In XLRs, for situations where you want to employ the 1073SPX‑D as a monitor controller in association with a different soundcard or audio interface. This setting, alas, doesn’t allow the input signal to be blended into the monitor path.
The top right area of the panel inherits the same two tiny red buttons and strip of LEDs that appear on the SPX, but they are now more than decorative. Amber LEDs indicate the current sample rate, and the leftmost button cycles through these in situations where the SPX‑D is being used as a standalone digital source (see box). A blue LED indicates successful USB connection, and the Sync button toggles between internal and external clock signals where that is appropriate.
Over USB
Like Neve’s 88M interface, the 1073SPX‑D is class‑compliant and thus requires no driver installation on macOS. Nor is there any control panel utility, as everything is handled either from the front panel or the Audio MIDI Setup utility. Windows users will, as usual, need to install an ASIO driver to work with most DAW programs.
At base sample rates, the SPX‑D presents 10 inputs to your DAW and 12 outputs, the last eight of each being the ADAT channels. The preamp/EQ signal appears on input 1, while input 2 is unused. This is a shame, because it’s not hard to imagine applications for a second input. For instance, you might hope to be able to use the insert return as a separate input, so that a line‑level signal could pass through the EQ and into DAW input 2 whilst a mic is being recorded through the preamp and DAW input 1. A second line input would also allow an SPX‑D to be paired with an SPX for stereo recording; as it is, stereo requires two SPX‑Ds (which, on the plus side, could be configured as a stereo hardware insert).
The 1073SPX‑D has more virtual than physical outputs, since your DAW can address two stereo pairs in addition to the ADAT outs. This might not seem all that useful at first, because it’s only ever possible to monitor one or other of these output pairs, but the reason for it becomes apparent when you engage the front‑panel Digi button. Present but non‑operational on the SPX, this comes into its own on the SPX‑D, and allows the analogue line input to be replaced by DAW return 3. The idea is to make the preamp and EQ easily accessible as hardware inserts within your DAW, and it works very well. Apart from that, the 1073SPX‑D is pretty much ‘plug and play’.
To D Or Not To D?
The Neve 1073 remains probably the first choice of input channel for many, if not most, engineers and producers. But prior to the advent of this SPX‑D variant, there hasn’t been a ‘full fat’ version with EQ and insert points that could be hooked up directly to a computer and used without additional hardware. That’s clearly the niche that Neve are aiming to fill here, so have they managed to make the SPX‑D do everything you need, or would you be better off buying an SPX along with a third‑party audio interface?
That, I think, very much depends on your intended use. These days, it’s not uncommon for artists to take a compact but high‑spec recording rig on the road with them, to track vocals in hotel rooms or tour busses. In many ways, the SPX‑D is the ideal product for this role, and its insert points make it trivial to patch in the ubiquitous Tube‑Tech CL1B (other compressors are available, as they say on the BBC). The fly in the ointment is that it has only a single headphone output: fine if you’re self‑recording, not so much if there’s an engineer to cater for as well. Granted, the headphone amp should be capable of driving two pairs of cans through an analogue splitter, but when a session really matters, you don’t really want to be relying on kludges. Generating separate headphone feeds for artist and engineer will require a second amp fed from the monitor output, and even then, both will carry the same mix and be governed by the shared volume control.
The Digi button at the lower left of the front panel patches DAW return or ADAT channel 3 into the line input, making it easy to integrate the SPX‑D as a hardware insert.
The analogue monitor inputs, meanwhile, are an interesting addition, but they don’t really have much of a role to play if you’re using the 1073SPX‑D as a USB interface or ADAT expander — and if you’re not, they probably don’t justify the extra cost over the plain old SPX on their own, given that it’s not possible to blend the input signal and monitor signal at the headphone amp. Finally, I imagine that some users would still prefer the AES3 digital I/O that was planned for the SPX digital card to the ADAT Lightpipe protocol that Neve have chosen here, although that works perfectly well.
I particularly like the the Digi button, which makes it easy to use the SPX‑D as a hardware insert without repatching, regardless of whether you’re hooking it up over USB or as an ADAT expander.
But if there are areas where the SPX‑D isn’t quite as flexible as you’d hope, there are others where it exceeds expectations. I particularly like the the Digi button, which makes it easy to use the SPX‑D as a hardware insert without repatching, regardless of whether you’re hooking it up over USB or as an ADAT expander. And if you don’t need the built‑in monitoring, you can repurpose the monitor outputs as mults to distribute the input signal to a redundant recorder or another processor. Most of all, the SPX‑D remains a fully featured 1073 channel strip, with input and output transformers, an output ‘fader’ and all the other features you’d expect on the input side. This is not the case with the 1073OPX, the only other 1073 model that currently has USB interfacing available as an option. If you want an authentic, complete 1073 input channel that can deliver its audio goodness straight into your Mac or PC, the 1073SPX‑D is currently the only game in town. It’s a ‘proper’ 1073 with a USB socket — and it sounds great.
ADAT Expander Mode
If you want to take advantage of the 1073SPX‑D’s digital connectivity but you already have another audio interface, it can be used as an ADAT expander. It’s not necessary to put it into a special mode to do this; you just don’t connect the USB cable. The mic or line signal coming into the 1073 is presented on ADAT out channel 1, or split across channels 1+2 at high sample rates (the highest rate supported in expander mode is 96kHz). The digital signal reaching the ADAT in, meanwhile, is treated like the DAW return in USB mode. This means you can use the Blend control to achieve a suitable monitor balance between the live input and the signal arriving at ADAT 1+2 or 3+4, and also that a signal coming in on ADAT channel 3 can be substituted for the 1073’s line input and processed with its EQ.
The front‑panel Sync button is used to put the SPX‑D into internal clock mode, in which case the downstream device needs to be set to clock to it. Disengage Sync and the SPX‑D will try to follow an incoming ADAT clock, but unfortunately there is no visual feedback to indicate successful clocking or the presence of a digital input signal.
Pros
- An authentic 1073 input channel with the convenience of USB interfacing.
- Easy to integrate as hardware insert.
- Retains all of the analogue functionality of the SPX variant.
- Can act as an ADAT expander, analogue monitor controller and powerful headphone amp if you don’t need the USB connectivity.
- Sounds great, as you’d expect!
Cons
- Headphone monitoring arrangements not flexible enough for all use cases.
- Blend control doesn’t work with the analogue monitor inputs.
- A secondary line input would be nice.
Summary
The SPX‑D is the first fully-featured 1073 input channel that is also a plug‑and‑play USB audio interface.
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