The karacter 500 is a box full of vibrant colors. It covers a complete spectrum including mastering-grade saturation, tube-inspired distortion and glorious destruction. Gone are the days when only racks full of outboard gear could achieve these elusive and highly desirable styles of tonal coloration.

The entire unit is designed with discrete class-A topology, so even the most lo-fi sounds will benefit from the karacter’s high-end touch. Enhance your tracks or decimate everything – It’s a matter of karacter.

Premium Build Quality
The karacter 500 is all about details.Every single of its many aspects – sound, features, circuitry, components, design, materials, manufacturing – has been thought over and over until there was just nothing left to improve. Basically, every single part of our fine products is custom, and most of these are made according to our own designs and specs.
 
Only the best components the market has to offer are good enough for the karacter, and it shows. Each of our product is manually built to order and tested by ourselves, here at our headquarters in Germany.
 
Our product benefits sum up in an audio quality that is beyond all doubt. Even when extreme settings are used, the sound always stays clean and powerful.
 
Four Channel Configurations
This enormously creative tone-shaping solution offers two separate channels which can be set up for dual mono, linked stereo or linked and unlinked M/S operation. Three different coloration styles can be chosen from, and integrated mix stages for parallel signal processing as well as the unique Color Control add further versatility.
 
Mastering-Grade Saturation
The karacter 500 can add unobtrusive coloration and thickness to your music by applying subtle (or less subtle) amounts of symmetrical clipping. This mode has a soft characteristic curve and focuses on the uneven harmonics (h3, h5, …). Remember you can always use the mix controller to blend any desired amount of saturation with your original dry path for even further signal integrity.
 
Tube Inspired Distortion
Now, the karacter 500 becomes a different animal… Its clipping changes from a symmetrical to an asymmetrical characteristic, which pleasingly reminds of the style a driven tube amp would sound like. More even harmonics (h2, h4, …) come into play, and what has been saturation before is now turned into truly musical distortion. Be sure to make extensive use of the Color controller in this mode!
 
Glorious Destruction
Turbo Boost puts the FET Shred mode on steroids. It shifts the operating point of the distortion circuitry, resulting in a signal structure which is even more asymmetrical than before. This will become most obvious at higher settings of the Drive controller, sounding great for industrial styles, mangling samples, brutal guitar sounds and much more…
 
Color Filter
The Color Filter is a unique, complex filter network controlled by just a single knob. This is something really different than the simple top end roll-off filters found on many distortion devices, as it is much more flexible and integrated deeply into the saturation circuits of the karacter 500.So, this filter does not change the frequency response after it has been formed, but instead it is an essential part of THD generation itself. It gives you a wide range of coloring options and several amazing sweet spots ranging from dubby growl to steely punch.
 
Integrated M/S Matrix
M/S technology is commonly known as a variant of stereo microphoning. This technique uses a microphone with cardioid pattern for the middle signal (M) and another one with bi-directional pattern with an offset of 90 for the side signal (S). The main advantage of this technology is its mono compatibility. FM radio stations use M/S technology for transmitting stereo signals exactly for this reason.
 
Dual Mono/Stereo Link
karacter 500 gives you ultimate flexibility in terms of configuring its channels
 
Dual Mono
This gives you two fully independent channels of saturation/distortion /destruction – two units in one! This is of course the right mode to process two completely different signals at the same time. Or to send the output of channel 1 into channel 2 for even further mangling… if you dare.
 
Stereo Link
In this mode, both channels are linked and controlled by just a single set of controls for comfortably processing stereo sources. The left controllers and switches become the master for both channels. The obvious benefit is that you don’t have to compare and match the settings of your left and right channels all of the time when processing stereo material.
 
M/S Unlinked
This gives you the option to process the mid and the side signals completely independent from each other. Then, left becomes mid channel and right becomes side channel. You can apply a high amount of saturation to the mid and leave the sides completely untouched, or the other way round, or anything in between.
 
M/S Linked
The linked M/S mode might seem a little odd, as the behavior seems to be exactly the same as in linked stereo mode. It can still have its benefits, though, as the inevitable divergences between left and right channel which are caused by natural component tolerances will be reduced in this mode, because here the side information of both channels is processed in a single audio path.
 
Stepped Controllers
The karacter 500 features stepped potentiometers for all its parameters throughout. The 41 steps make a precise recall very easy, and they provide a useful range of possible settings at the same time. 
 
Ground Layer Shield
The PCBs of the karacter 500 have a total of none less than six layers: While the first five are used for separately routing audio and power supply, the sixth one is a dedicated ground shield layer.
 
Discrete Class-A Topology
 In a class-A amplifier, the transistors are conductive all of the time, so there is no crossover distortion at all. This is the perfect technological basis for an open sound with massive punch and no degradation of your original source.
 
The discrete approach makes it possible to design every single stage in signal processing exactly to what you want it to do – physics becomes the only limit. The karacter uses our custom discrete input and output stages derived from the alpha compressor, and the complete audio path is a fully discrete class-A design, too.
 
The Specs
Frequency response
100% Dry: <10Hz- 400 kHz (-3dB)100% Wet: <10 Hz - 27 kHz(-3.dB)THD+N. 100 % Dry@ 0 dBu: 0.013%@ +10 dBu: 0.024 %
THD+N
100 % Wet (in Saturation Mode)@ 0 dBu Min Drive: 0.47 %@ 0 dBu Max Drive: 35.1 %
Noise floor
20 Hz – 20 kHz (A-weighted)100% Dry: -91 dB100% Wet (depending on Drive and.Gain): -81 to -91 dBu
Dynamic range
20 Hz – 22 kHz: 112 dB
Maximum level 
Input: +21 dBuOutput: +21 dBu
Impedance
Input: 10 kOhmOutput: 68 Ohm 
Power consumption
Total: 210 mAPer slot: 105 mA