ers, selected by pressing front panel pushbuttons. Without the HA-6AB, a separate amplifi er would be needed for the studio speakers. The HA-6AB also features a convenient input level control on the left side of the front panel. A pair of yellow LED’s (one for each channel) light up whenever a signal is present. Another pair of red LED’s shows an overload condition in either channel.
The Furman HA-6AB’s 20 watts-per-channel make it ideal as a low distortion headphone driver for the most critical listening situations. While most headphone amplifi ers provide half a watt or less per headphone channel, the HA-6AB’s higher power can drive headphones of any impedance to their full rated listening level, and do so with minimal noise and distortion. Its power capacity is also just right for the small near fi eld monitors used in most recording studios; as a comparison with the main control room monitors, it can power them without overpowering them. On the studio
floor, a set of small monitor speakers driven by the HA-6AB can make a session progress more effi ciently by giving the musicians a chance to hear a playback without needing to disconnect themselves from their equipment and walk into the control room. Additionally, the HA-6AB is fully protected against thermal overload, and it can withstand a short circuit on any or all outputs for an indefi nite time without damage.
ACCESSORIES
Model HR-2 Headphone Remote Station: A compact, unobtrusive box that clamps to any
mic stand, providing two headphone jacks, each with its own volume control. Up to twelve HR-2 boxes may be connected to a HA-6AB, employing standard microphone cables (depending on the impedance of the headphones used).
USES OF HA-6AB
The HA-6AB may be used as a power ampli-
fier to drive up to two pairs of speakers, or as a headphone amplifi er for one to six pairs of head- phones, or both. Additional headphones may be connected through use of HR-2 Remote Boxes.
RECORDING
In the recording studio, headphones are most often used in the overdubbing process, whereby new musical tracks are recorded in synchro- nization with previously recorded tracks. The musicians doing the overdub hear the previously recorded tracks in their headphones, and play along with them. Synchronization is maintained because almost all multitrack recorders have the capability of playing back through certain chan- nels of the record head while recording through others. In this way, it is possible to build up a complete recording of many tracks, adding one or more new tracks with each overdub.
Headphones are much preferred to speakers for cueing the overdub, because of the presence of open microphones which would pick up the cue tracks as well as the overdub. Any trace of the cue tracks in the overdub tracks would degrade the tracks’ separation and make it diffi cult to achieve a good mix later on. In fact, even if headphones
