Cranborne Audio 500R8

The Centrepiece To Your Studio
500R8 is the new home for 8 of your favourite 500 series modules. It’s also your new 26/28 channel USB audio interface, monitor controller, ADAT interface, and discrete analogue summing mixer.

Analogue Character
500R8 takes analogue electronics and USB integration to the next level by allowing you to utilise your favourite 500 series modules as your very own customisable tracking front-end directly into your DAW. Dedicated USB source selects for each slot and a discrete analogue summing mixer with it’s own USB send allows you to bring your 500 series modules- such as EQs, compressors, and saturation devices -into your mixing process and bring analogue sound back into your workflow.

Digital Precision
500R8 features reference-class analogue-to-digital conversion with 121dB (unweighted) signal-to-noise ratio and a master-reference grade internal digital clock with ultra-low jitter (<0.5 picoseconds). The combination of highly-accurate clocking and high-performance digital conversion ensures that every subtle nuance of your analogue signal is captured with the utmost detail, free of any unwanted digital artefacts from the conversion process and with a wide dynamic range due to 500R8’s high-headroom and low-noise floor design.

World-Class Digital Performance
To create a “studio in a box” where your favourite 500 series modules could shine on your digital recordings, it was critical to ensure our digital conversion and analogue processing is best-in-class. We squeezed every possible .1dB of performance out of 500R8 to achieve digital and analogue performance that ensures that the only thing colouring your recordings are mic placements and mix decisions.

AD/DA Performance
The implementation of our ADCs result in 121dB (unweighted) signal-to-noise ratio and – 112dB THD+N whilst our DACs achieve 127dB (unweighted) signal-to-noise and -115dB THD+N. Our analogue design stages operate at between 0.0002-0.0004% THD+N to ensure that the only factors influencing the converters’ dynamic range are the converters themselves and not the supporting analogue circuity.

Master Reference-Quality Clock
A/D and D/A numbers don’t tell the whole story. Converters are only as good as the clocks that are governing them. Our internal digital clock reaches atomic-clock level accuracy, for master reference-quality with < 0.5 picoseconds of jitter. Our designs feature isolated analogue and digital ground planes and power rails so that our digital elements receive accurate clocks and our analogue signals are noise- and distortion-free.

CAST stands for Cat5 Analogue Snake Transport and enables cost effective and organised cable management around your studio by repurposing off-the-shelf shielded Cat5 Networking cables to transport 4 channels of balanced analogue audio (mic, Line, or Instrument level) over a single cable.

500R8 has 4 CAST RRTT ports that allow you to connect any of our breakout boxes (to be announced soon) and place analogue I/O where you need it – whether it’s in the live room, vocal booth, or the bedroom next door.

Our clever impedance matching means that the signal quality can exceed that of a mic cable for a fraction of the price and over a distance of up to 100m. CAST is 100% analogue and requires ZERO setup. Plug one end of the cable in one box, and the other end into 500R8 and it just works. No setup. No latency. No fuss. And it sounds great.