AlphaTheta announces flagship rotary mixer, euphonia
The company’s first rotary mixer costs €3,799 and features a Rupert Neve Designs transformer
AlphaTheta, the sister brand of Pioneer DJ, has announced a new flagship four-channel rotary mixer called the euphonia.
The new rotary is a pivot from the usual club-standard mixers we’ve come to expect from Pioneer/AlphaTheta and features some unique features, including a Rupert Neve Designs (RND) transformer circuit at the output stage. Rupert Neve was an engineer whose Neve preamps and EQs are still sought after in studios around the world, winning the legendary audio veteran a Grammy in 1997.
The partnership with RND goes some way to explaining the care behind the sound of the euphonia, which is designed to rival high-end, boutique rotaries like MasterSounds and E&S. The transformer adds subtle harmonics to the full frequency range of the final output and was “tuned specifically for the euphonia” according to the press material that announced the new mixer.
Unlike MasterSounds and E&S, though, AlphaTheta’s rotary does combine digital and analogue, with the euphonia featuring a 32-bit ADA converter due to its digital FX section. This includes a high-pass filter, delay, tape echo, echo verb, reverb and shimmer. There’s also a send-return option that gives the option of using external send effects with the euphonia. Another unique feature is multi-band send FX via the Send Boost function. Above the three-band master isolator EQ — similar to that on the Pioneer V10 — you’ll find a Send button for each band, meaning you can apply FX only to that band specifically, opening up a lot of creative sound sculpting potential.
Elsewhere, each channel features the usual three-band EQ and send for effects, though there’s no dedicated filter per channel, assumedly because that would have introduced another digital stage to each input. The VU meters are slightly unconventional, too, with an “energy visualiser” that combines the output of all four channels into one VU readout, while also offering four separate coloured needles, one for each channel.
The euphonia costs €3,799 and is out now. You can find more details on the AlphaTheta website.
Earlier this year, AlphaTheta Corporation — the parent company of Pioneer DJ and AlphaTheta — announced its new brand for DJ products.
