Does anybody know anything about this unit and it's sonic qualities ?
All I know, that it's a Mono Comp/Lim/Exp/De-Esser, designed by Rupert.

Thanks,
andreas

Hey Andreas,

I think you are thinking of the 130. I think the 131 is a gate/something.

The 130 is a classic. Its great on a lot of things(vocals and bass). Its the comp based on the one in the Focusrite console. The 131 is if I remember correctly the gate.

The 130 is what is used in the design of the Blue 230(hence the name 230 or (2) 130's) with more modern electronics(heftier power supply). The Red 3 is also based on the same design.

In the original ISA series the ISA 130 was a console module which offered "Compressor/Limiter, De-esser/Exciter, Noise Gate/Expander, Gain Reduction/Signal Metering and Eq/Filters, all within a single...module".

The ISA 131 was a 130 in a single-space rackmount, with internal PSU and wired for optional stereo linking.

Yeah?

I remember a while back I had Merc Rac with a bunch of Focusrite modules(110 or 115's) and a 130. I remember a gate in it, but it wasn't the 130.

Oh well.

Thanks.

Here's a picture of an ISA 131:

Here's a 130, to give a sense of the control surface-

I own two Focusrite ISA131s. They look exactly like the one in the picture above.

They are the rack mounted version of the original ISA130 console module. The rack mounted version also includes a power supply.

The ISA131 (ISA130) are a compressor / gate w/ desser, eq & filter sections.

I like the sound of them. IMO, they're kind of like a clean, smooth sounding Distressor.

Oh wow ! Thanks a lot, John.

Funny EQ section ! I guess, the three red knobs in the middle are on/off switches ? Any idea, what was the plan behind this layout ?

Andreas

Does it sound anything like the ISA 330?

The 330 has different models(no transformers,transformer on the output,transformer on both in and out).

The 330 is a custom made mastering compressor. The most common configuration is no transformers(just a clean signal). If this is the one you are speaking of the answer is no.

The 230 or 330(with transformers on in and out) sounds closest.

A big ditto on TTF's comments.

As you can move each band of the equalizer/filter section, I have found them to be remarkably useful for snare drums... assigning the hi and lo pass filters to the sidechain of the gate, a little compression, and a little extra "bap" from the sweepable mid band in the audio path... a great tool for bringing a shitty snare back from the dead.... other than that, I've never found them to be all that genius... but on a crap sounding snare, they can come pretty close to allowing you to do alchemy.

Best of luck.

you can assign the filters and eq to the side chain of the compressor or gate or leave it in the signal path, it also has an exciter which I've found useful on kik (tracking) When I had these I used them on kik and snare tracking (Neve 1066, no eq) with an infinity slope compression sending the low filter to the compression side chain and using the other filter and the PEQ to balance the signal and the exciter to bring them thru the mix. other guys would ask how I got that sound, which was not hyped it was just really there, I pointed at the box. Maybe it was just my thing? It's useful if you want to spend time with it. It has no headroom and the threshold control doesn't go high enough (same thing?), I wish someone would make a version with +30dB headroom and I would get a pair in a heartbeat.

To set the record straight, the ISA130 is a compressor/de-esser/gate that came before the dynamics unit in the Forte console, which was a slightly simplified version in order to fit it in the space. And both were designed by Trevor Stride (me), not Rupert Neve, though the sidechain EQ borrowed some ideas from the ISA110 which of course he did design. The 131 was a later horizontal mounting version of the 131.