Cranborne Audio Camden 500 Series Microphone Preamp

Cranborne Audio Camden 500 Series Microphone Preamp Delivers the Best of Both Worlds

Cranborne Audio Camden 500 Series Microphone Preamp is 500 Series Mic/Line/Instrument Preamp with 3way Input Impedance, Coloration, Highpass Filter. The Cranborne Audio Camden 500 is a mic, line, and instrument preamplifier with truly impressive low-noise and low-distortion performance as well as frequency and phase linearity at all gain settings. The net result is a stunningly clean, pristine, and natural-sounding 500 Series preamp module that delivers every source as a neutral canvas you can paint with your choice of analog and digital processing. But when you want vintage British tonal character, that’s where Cranborne’s Mojo circuit comes in.

Clean, Precise, and Natural

Camden 500 provides the utmost clarity and detail when it is most required. Its custom ‘Camden’ topology achieves stunning low-noise and low-distortion performance: -129.8dB EIN (150ohm, unweighted) and THD+N as low as 0.0002%.  It also sets a new standard for frequency and phase linearity: ±0.7dB frequency response from 5Hz to 200kHz at max gain and <2° phase shift @ 50Hz – 20kHz. The sum result is the most natural sounding preamp you’ve ever heard.

Vintage, Warm, and Coloured

Camden 500 features “Mojo” – a custom analogue saturation circuit that transforms Camden 500 into the fattest, warmest, most colourful mic preamp in your arsenal. Designed to introduce harmonics and saturation effects that our favourite vintage gear produces, Mojo can be subtle, it can be exaggerated, but best of all it can be bypassed…

Camden 500’s Transformerless Design

So why don’t we use transformers in the Camden 500? Well if we look at the two reasons why you’d want transformers – 1) common-mode rejection and 2) colouration/saturation – we find that Camden 500’s transformerless design provides more flexibility and performance in both areas.

1) Common-mode rejection

Thanks to the Camden 500’s unique topology – the Camden 500 achieves similar rejection ratios to most transformers with high-frequency rejection that surpasses most thanks to the careful discrete design and biasing of our analogue stages.

2) Saturation/Colouration

Without the need for a transformer to achieve sufficient isolation – the Camden 500 can produce a more transparent, linear sound than is possible with most transformers. Transformers have “a sound” which may be to taste or may not be. But Camden 500 provides frequency- and phase- linear sound capture – the perfect neutral canvas for further processing. And that further processing is built-into the Camden with it’s Mojo analogue saturation circuit.

Tech Specs

Put simply, Camden 500 is one of the cleanest, most linear, and transparent preamps on the market. Our new ‘Camden’ preamp topology allows us to push the boundaries of Frequency response, phase shift, noise, and THD performance; and we have all the specs to back that up.

EIN: <-129.5dBu, 150 ohm source, unweighted
<-135.5dBu, Inputs common, unweighted

THD+N: <0.0004%, 1kHz, 35dB gain, 24dBu out

Phase Shift: <2.25°, 40dB gain, 20Hz to 20kHz
<4°, Max gain, 20Hz to 20kHz

Freq. Response: <±1dB, <5 Hz to >200 kHz, all gain settings

CMRR: >70dB, typ >85dB, 35dB Gain, 10-20kHz, 100mV Common mode