Rupert Neve Designs Portico 543 500 Series Compressor

The Rupert Neve Designs Portico 543 Mono Compressor delivers the unobtrusive, musical-sounding dynamic control along with brick-wall limiting found in the iconic Portico 5043 module in the 500 Series format. The RND 543 features a fully controllable VCA compressor-limiter with the Peak/RMS detection, feed-forward/feed-back modes, and a built-in sidechain high-pass filter. With a proven heritage and tremendous feature set, the Rupert Neve 543 yields a combination of rich warmth, precision, and flexibility that will resonate in the ears of sound engineers around the world.

TRADITIONAL RUPERT NEVE DESIGNS IN A NEW FORM

Built around Rupert Neve’s custom transformer designs, each 543 500 Series module encompasses individually controllable attack, release, threshold, makeup gain reduction, ratio, unity gain, sidechain HPF, Feed-forward/Feed-back selection, and Peak/RMS detection modes. With the diode bridge compressor inactive, the Rupert Neve Designs 543 may be used as a high-performance, transformer-coupled line amplifier. Two Portico 543s can be linked for stereo operation. The 543 chassis is built to standard 500 Series pro audio specifications with power and I/O provided by the 500 Series rack.

BEST FEATURES OF THE PORTICO 543

One of the more unique features of the Rupert Neve Designs 543 is the new Peak/RMS mode that can also be found in the Portico II Channel. This connectivity switch allows the VCA (voltage control amplifier) to combine with both RMS (Root Mean Square) and its peak levels. The Portico RMS circuits are considered the best to mimic the way the ears perceive loudness, while peak circuits in this 500 Series mono compressor tend to respond directly to the waveform voltage, which can be more of a concern for the user’s prevention of clipping and maximizing levels. In this instance, peak mode uses a combination of both these methods to get the best of both while avoiding the drawbacks of each method independently.

The RND 543 compressor also has the ability to change between feed-forward and feed-back modes. In most of Rupert Neve’s earliest designs, the feedback detection – controlling the VCA with a resolved voltage from the RND Portico’s output – was intrinsic to the musical dynamic response. Instead, the very nature of a gain reduction feedback compressor limits the overall attack time of the 500 Series compression circuit. To offer a faster and more technically accurate response times, with feed-forward detection that was implemented on Rupert Neve’s more modern designs. With this 500 series rack’s FF/FB switch, both the classic and modern VCA responses are available.