The Switchcraft® 318BT plugs into a low impedance mic input using the Switchcraft male XLR balanced connector and is powered from the mic pre-amp’s 48-volt phantom powering or via a micro USB jack on its side. The 318BT runs under the latest 4.0 Bluetooth standard to receive an audio stream from any BT-enabled device. I like the black-anodized aluminum case and the tiny LED on the front end that confirms pairing to the device.
I plugged the 318BT directly into the front panel XLR connector of my Sunset Sound S1P Tutti Mic-Pre and used about 50dB of mic gain to raise the audio level to +4dBm line level for my Pro Tools interface. But I could have also just plugged it into any audio console’s microphone channel just as well. The 318BT immediately “paired” up with my iPhone 6 and I was streaming music directly.
The 318BT combines the left and right stereo channels into mono and I thought the 16-bit sound quality was fine for playing iPhone music, songwriters’ song ideas, samples or demos or reference track(s) during a busy session.
Other applications include background music, narrative presentations, House of Worship, music rehearsals and many more. The Switchcraft 318BT Bluetooth Audio Receiver sells for $110 MAP.
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BARRY RUDOLPH is a recording engineer/mixer who has worked on over 30 gold and platinum records. He has recorded and/or mixed Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hall & Oates, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, the Corrs and more. Barry has his own futuristic music mixing facility and loves teaching audio engineering at Musician’s Institute, Hollywood, CA. He is a lifetime Grammy-voting member of NARAS and a contributing editor for Mix Magazine. barryrudolph.com
