Black Lion Audio Auteur DT Single-channel Desktop Microphone Preamp

Black Lion Audio Auteur DT: Single-channel Desktop Microphone Preamp

Big Console Sound—On Your Desktop

The Auteur DT is a single-channel desktop version of Black Lion Audio’s popular Auteur preamp design, featuring an ultra-high-speed front end and a transformer-coupled output stage. The combination, which we’ve seen before from Black Lion, gives exquisite delicacy and clarity while remaining perfectly balanced with a hefty, vintage-flavored assertiveness that holds its own in a mix. The Auteur DT provides 60 dB of clean gain, allowing you to use your favorite ribbon mics on quieter sources. A high-Z DI input is available for direct injection of electric guitars, bass, keyboards, and so forth. Phantom power, polarity reverse, and 10dB pad buttons round out the front panel feature set. With its robust, black brushed-aluminum housing and exquisite hardwood end caps, the Auteur DT looks rather elegant on your desk. It also has a large, silky-smooth gain control and a cool vintage-style VU meter that is easy to read even in low-light studio environments. We enjoy the Black Lion Auteur DT a lot. It’s versatile, well-built, and sounds fantastic!

It sounds like a record.

The Auteur DT is incredibly versatile. Consider it a single channel of a large-format console that occupies very little space on your desktop. With its quick front end and transformer-balanced output stage, Black Lion’s patented “Chicago-style” circuitry can correctly capture and acoustically optimize whatever source you feed through it, mic or DI. This produces songs that are easier to combine into a final, polished output that “sounds like a record.”

Outstanding value

Since 2006, Black Lion Audio has been assisting artists and engineers in improving the sound of their equipment, and they’ve established a good reputation for extracting world-class sound from reasonably priced gear. As a company that made its name making outstanding mods, Black Lion, maybe predictably, creates creative audio equipment of their design that routinely outperforms its price range. The Auteur DT uses Black Lion’s most recent preamp technology, which includes an optimized gain stage that produces more gain with less noise and distortion and a wider frequency response than previous designs. Drums sound large and forceful via the Auteur DT, while vocals sit nicely and guitars soar. The Black Lion Auteur DT delivers professional results regardless of the source.

Black Lion Audio: The Mod Squad

Black Lion Audio, founded in Chicago in 2006, has built a name for itself in the audio market by hot-rodding audio equipment and improving the sound quality of popular music-production gear, bringing industry-standard goods to new heights of aural quality. Though they began by customizing gear from other manufacturers, they have used their collective knowledge to create their line of boutique mic preamps and word clocks. BLA and altered gear can be found in studios from Los Angeles to New York to Nashville and have been heard on projects by artists such as Maroon 5, Alison Krauss, Metallica, T-Pain, George Strait, MGMT, Beyoncé, George Duke, Slayer, Erykah Badu, Rod Stewart, and others.

Black Lion Audio Auteur DT. Single-channel desktop microphone/instrument preamp Features:

• Front-panel 1/4-inch hi-Z DI input
• Positive locking LED indicator buttons for phantom power, phase inversion, 10dB pad, and Hi-Z toggle
• 60dB of gain for all mics
• Frequency response: 10 Hz–30 kHz
• Classic brushed black aluminum chassis with vintage-style wood end caps.

Tech Specifications

•  Solid-state preamp with 1 channel,
• Phantom power, -10dB pads, polarity switch
• 1 x XLR, 1 x 1/4″ TRS (Hi-Z) inputs, 1 x 1/4″ TRS output
• Frequency response of 10Hz–30kHz
• 24V AC power supply
• 2″ height, 6″ depth.