AED group is a solution provider for AV professionals. With rental locations in 5 European countries, their equipment is often seen on live events and productions. AED Rent noticed an increase in the demand for Radial DI’s and decided to invest in various direct boxes.

Piet Verstraete, Sound Engineer/ Accountmanager at AED Rent: “The broad range of DI’s Radial offers, are a great motivation to work with these items. More importantly, Radial’s direct boxes are of the highest quality. The DI’s are built like tank and very sustainable and above that, the DI’s produce a great sound.”

AED Rent chose for the classical J48 and JDI as well as the JDI-Duplex and USB-Pro.

The Radial J48 has been designed from the ground up to deliver the most natural tone. Radial build the J48 to retain and transfer the true character of the instrument to the mixing console without adding distortion or introducing artifact. Using only 48V phantom power, the Radial J48 is an active direct box that produces an exceptionally linear response that extends from 20Hz up to well above 40kHz. Low distortion of all types is achieved via a unique digital switching power supply that raises the internal operating rail voltage for added headroom and improved signal handling.

The Radial JDI is a passive direct box designed to handle extreme signal levels without distortion of any kind. Unlike an active DI that is limited by the buffering amplifier’s rail voltage, the JDI employs a Jensen audio transformer as the engine. Jensen transformers are legendary in their ability to gracefully handle transients while delivering a smooth, warm sounding Bessel curve, reminiscent of the finest vintage gear. Ruler flat from 10Hz to 40kHz and with virtually zero phase deviation, the JDI delivers the natural, pure sound of the instrument without artifact.

The Radial JDI Duplex is a full-feature, stereo passive direct box designed to enhance connectivity, reduce noise, and simplify the hectic life of the touring professional, broadcast engineer or AV integrator. It is plug-and-play easy to use ‘Swiss Army knife’ while delivering the utmost sonic quality. The Duplex employs two high-performance Jensen audio transformers with the same pristine audio signal path that has made the JDI the industry standard. It features exceptional signal handling with virtually zero phase shift or harmonic distortion, while remaining linear across the entire audio spectrum. When driven to extremes, the natural transformer saturation and resulting warm Bessel curve makes the Radial Duplex the perfect choice for smoothing out highly dynamic instruments such as digital pianos and electronic drums that can sound harsh when pushed.

The Radial USB-Pro is a high-resolution stereo digital audio converter (DAC) and direct box that is designed to connect to any computer system to seamlessly transfer digital audio to analog. A stereo pair of balanced XLR audio outputs with adjustable level control then feeds the signal to a microphone preamplifier, PA system, mixing console or even a powered speaker. Made for plug and play simplicity, the USB-Pro will automatically be listed as an available sound card in the audio settings in all popular operating systems.

Piet Verstraete on the USB-Pro: “At live events, laptops are frequently used as audio source. The USB-Pro DI acts as an USB interface, which results in not having to use the poor-sounding jack output of the laptop anymore. Because of the direct USB connection, a better sound can be provided and there’s a safer connection.”