Metric Halo ULN-2

(random internet photo of unit)

Make / Model: Metric Halo ULN-2
Year: 2005
Purchased: Sweetwater, 2006
Price: $1200 (new)

You can hear this on:
F*box ‘This Malaise Is Our Grave’
This entire EP was recorded using the Metric Halo ULN-2 and an OKTAVA MC012, monitored through the ULN-2 and a pair of Sennheiser HD-600s

Build Quality

Great.

Sound Quality

Amazing.

Impressions

If you need to record two channels of audio, with microphones, perfectly, this thing is what you need.

This was actually my second one of these. I purchased the first one a year earlier, but didn’t use it much, so I sold it. In 2006, I was living in Baltimore for a few months, and needed to track an EP, so I got this thing, and an Oktava MC012.

The D/A on this thing was great. The A/D on it was great. But the most amazing part was the Mic Preamps. Very high quality. Not *quite* as good as a Hardy M-1, but pretty damn good.

As it was firewire, there was virtually no latency, so tracking was easy.

The gain control on the unit was a little weird. You had a main gain, on what seemed like a stepped switch, then a fine gain on a linear potentiometer. That could slow you down a bit if you were just used to turning one knob to get going.

Very good unit, albeit a little expensive. But I think the expense really came down to the build quality: It seemed like this thing was made for location recording and taking abuse.