Manley Labs Elop

Product description

Text by Manley Labs:

Set it and forget it! Our ELOP® Limiters make your job easy. The principle of operation is based around using a rectified sample of the audio to shine an LED (Light Emitting Diode) onto an LDR (Light Dependent Resistor). The photo-resistor in combination with a fixed resistor simply act as a changing voltage divider to attenuate the signal-- like a smart volume control. A similar principle was found in the older Teletronix®** & Urei LA-2A®**, LA-3, and LA-4 units which used a slower electro-luminescent panel-light on a conventional LDR encased in a light-tight enclosure. Ours uses modern VACTROL technology (but with a trick!) for exact sample-to-sample tracking and no high frequency loss while digging deep into limiting-- problems commonly associated with older LA-series limiters and other opto-based units.

The audio signal passes only through our super-clean single-ended vacuum tube line amplifiers in the Manley unit, and through all-discrete Class A amplifiers in the Langevin version. Each channel can be run separately or switched to “stereo - link ”. Due to their inherently quick attack, these Electro-Optical Limiters are skilled soldiers for tracking vocals or individual instruments, although now with the addition of a very useful sidechain high-pass filter that can switch between 100Hz or 200Hz (or OUT) to allow the limiter to ignore heavy bass lines, the ELOP® limiter is proving more useful for modern urban music where you don’t want the limiter only responding to the loudest “thing” i.e., the BIG bass.