Langevin AM-16

The Langevin AM-16 is a stereo set of microphone preamplifiers. I don’t know the origins of these, but they seem mostly to be found in custom forms and clones rather than the real thing. That’s what we’ve got at the studio where I work – an AM-16 that I believe was custom built to spec. I don’t know the connections of the preamp since it’s hooked into our patch bay in our C room and I haven’t had to move it yet. Ours is rackable and only takes up a single rack space, although I’ve seen pictures of some that don’t look rackable.


UTILIZATION

Using the Langevin AM-16 couldn’t be much simpler, but it still has all of the controls you’d want with a mic preamp. Each channel has a gain knob to go along with a series of our switches for phantom power, phase reverse, a pad, and a mic/line selection. I don’t know if there’s a manual for the AM-16, but one’s not necessary.



SOUND QUALITY

The sound of the Langevin AM-16 is extremely full and true sounding. I recently did a preamp shoot out involving the AM-16 against an Avedis MA5 and an API 512, and this was probably the truest sounding of the bunch. All sounded really good however, with the AM-16 being right in the thick of things. I was using it to record vocals, but I’d imagine it will translate well to other applications as well.


OVERALL OPINION

I don’t think you can buy a commercial version of the Langevin AM-16, but there are some out there that are custom made. I honestly don’t know much information on these, I just know that the one we’ve got at the studio sounds really great. It’s awesome that they come in channels of two, as I’d love to do some stereo recording with it sometime soon. I’m eager to experiment as far as applications go with the AM-16, but it’s definitely an awesome mic preamp if you ever get to try one.