Langevin Dual Vocal Combo

L A N G E V I N

Dual Vocal Combo

This processor is the stuff legends are made of.

By Myles Boisen

anley Laboratories is this country’s biggest little manufacturer of modern, high-end tube gear. Manley products such as the Vox Box, Massive Passive equalizer, and Variable-Mu stereo compressor are glowing beacons of warmth in this digital age. They are also, sadly, too expensive for most EM readers, so they rarely appear in these pages. Thankfully, personal-studio owners can now reap the benefits of Manley’s no-compromises approach to circuit design with a full range of solid-state boxes branded with the historic Langevin name.

With the Langevin Dual Vocal Combo, the esteemed Manley Laboratories finally addresses the needs—and budget restraints—of the personal-studio recordist seeking uncompromised audio (click image for larger view).

The Langevin Company was founded in 1923 in New York. Throughout its 50-year history of manufacturing transformers and radio-broadcast equipment, the company went through a series of ownership and name changes. After moving around the country, Langevin relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1960s. Langevin mixing consoles found their way into a number of recording studios, and the company’s AM16 mic-preamp modules remain a hot item on the vintage-pro-audio market today.

In 1992, Manley Laboratories acquired the rights to the Langevin name and designs and has since given the Langevin name to all of its solid-state processors. In addition, Manley made critical improvements to some of the original Langevin circuit designs. Though it’s tempting to think of Langevin as Manley’s budget line, the price and quality of the various models I’ve seen easily put them in the same ranks as the best contemporary Class A and solid-state units.

The most versatile and deluxe Langevin offering to date, the new Dual Vocal Combo combines the attributes of the Dual Mono Microphone Preamplifier with EQ and the Dual-Channel Electro-Optical Limiter (or El-Op). The Dual Vocal Combo also provides a direct input for each channel, making the unit a full-featured pair of “channel strip” processors that goes well beyond the limitations suggested by its name. Techies will appreciate that the microphone input uses a Manley Labs custom-wound transformer and is all-discrete Class A, with no integrated circuits or op amps in the signal path.

Reprinted with permission from

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