I could see through the fine meshwork on the top of the Manley VoxBox that there was some powerful stuff under the hood. As I pulled it out I felt like a Navy Seal setting up a secret electronics weapon station. I could not tear myself away from the detented knobs and the smooth pots. As time ticked away and I recorded track after track, I realized that this box must be mine!
The Manley VoxBox inspires confidence from top to bottom and it operates as if it were designed by a really good recording engineer. Get your best musicians in the door now, because this box is going to let you record clean predictable tracks with very little fuss. Any engineer who has patched together a whole rack of gear, and written down all of his settings – only to find out that “oh we need to bypass one stage of this now,” or “repatch this to that,” or “trace down where that noise is coming from,” will love this box. The VoxBox is a minimalist purist’s dream come true on the design and operating level. Somehow all the right knobs and switches are there and the irritating redundant ones just aren’t. When you don’t need something, there is a switch right there that bypasses it with no clicks or pops.
Bottom line? You no longer need separate vocal and instrument preamps, compressors, limiters, de-essers, and 3-band parametric EQs: Just a VoxBox. Need to record stereo? Fine, buy two, connect them together, and their de-essing and compression will even move as one to keep your stereo image blur-free. Have an extra piece that you can’t do without in your chain? It can be inserted, no problem. This is the best investment you could make in your studio. You’ll use it on everyone you record from here on out. As an engineer this is a piece that I could get to know and then trust for life.
