My Preamp comparison

M

MadMax

New member
I'm just a hobbyist who records in spurts. I'll leave it alone for months and then get the fever and come back to it. Usually this gives me GAS and I become obsessed with mics & preamps. I have a drum session coming up this weekend and I bought a couple of MXL604's for overheads. I'm going to use an Audix D6 on the kick and SM-57's on the rest.
I started lusting over preamps and decided to compare the ones that I have.
It's not scientific. I just spoke into a handheld SM-57.
The 3 pre's I used were;

Yamaha O1v96> aux out
Mackie 1202 VLZ> channel insert
ART Studio V3 modelling preamp-voicing set to "flat".> output
From there, I used the line inputs of my M-Audio Delta 1010 LT sound card. My speakers are my trusty old Alesis Monitor 1's.

I don't have golden ears by any means. I played guitar in loud bar bands for years and I was a monitor engineer for a regional sound company.
The bottom line is, I think I could hear very very slight differences between the 3 and even then, I could never qualify the difference in a million years.

So, my conclusions are thusly;
1. I'm deaf.
2. My monitors aren't good enough to reveal the subtleties.
3. There isn't enough difference in the 3 pre's I tested. They're all in the same low end classification.
4. Preamps in general are pretty subtle and spending $$$ on a high end pre for a project studio is a waste of money.


So, for me the pre's that I have are more than adequate. But I'm still dreaming of the Holy Grail magical preamp that will make me go "WOW!".
 
I know there are those on HR who swear by the ability of pre amps to magically change or fix the sound but I'm not one of them. Pre amp performance differences are generally pretty subtle.

You've chosen 3 different pre amps that are known to be pretty darn good. I would have expected exactly the results you got. Use a really top end mic and monitor through some really top end speakers and you might start to hear the subtle differences a bit more. However, even in that scenario there's not going to be one pre amp that stands out as either great or inferior.

FYI, the pre amps in the 01V96 are certainly not in the "low end" category. With the upgrade from the original 01V to the 96 variant, one of the big changes was the pre amps which are very good indeed. You've certainly heard them on most feature films and broadway shows you've listened to since the 01V96 is commonly used in the project studios for people doing sound stems or effects for film--or as a sub mixer for keyboards or drums in Broadway orchestras.

If I was suffering from GAS my money would go on mics and monitors.
 
One of the things that made me post this is that I've read on this forum that the Mackie pre's were god awful and almost anything would be a step up. I also read that the O1v96 pre's were pretty useable. I didn't hear that. Like I said, I'd be hard pressed to eve be able to tell a difference at all, and to quantify that difference? Fugetabout it.
 
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Biggest thing I've found about Mackie pre amps is that they get very brittle as the levels approach clipping. If you're careful about your gain structure you might never notice this. Mackie mixers in general are not favourites of mine and, if I had an 01V96 lying around the Mackie would stay in the cupboard.

However, would I spend any money on boutique pre amps? Nope. As I said, I'd increase my collection of mics first.
 
I just upgraded to an Audient ASP-008 from a Mackie 1604 ---> ADAT XT (16 bit). I don't know if it is the A/D side of things but it was a significant upgrade. I'm also recording at 48K rather than 44.1K. My drums sound better than ever. I also think the Audient is better than the Digi 002 but I haven't run a test on it yet.

I already had decent mics though - a Neumann KM184, some Naiant SDCs, a rack of SM57s and 58s, Audix D6, AT4040, some EVs, a Samson dynamic.

Anyway, the techniques you use are more important than the equipment you have. I also record my full band at a friends house on a Sony minidisc and the results - while they are a far cry from my Pro Tools System - are still decent enough for demo purposes.
 
I just completed a session where I recorded 6 drum tracks using the O1v96 pre's >ADAT lightpipe>M Audio FW1814> Reaper 24 bit@48K. I Dropboxed the files to a producer in NY and he loves them.
This was by far the most demanding and professional session I've been involved with. I mic'd the drums as follows;
Audix D6 inside the Kick drum
Beta 57 under the snare
SM57 on the rack tom
SM57 on the Floor tom
a pair of stock MXL 604's on overheads.
All into the O1v96 with no processing. No EQ, or comp in the O1v and no DAW processing either, so what he got in ny was just the raw recordings.
It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot!!
 
MadMax said:
One of the things that made me post this is that I've read on this forum that the Mackie pre's were god awful and almost anything would be a step up. I also read that the O1v96 pre's were pretty useable. I didn't hear that. Like I said, I'd be hard pressed to eve be able to tell a difference at all, and to quantify that difference? Fugetabout it.
Click to expand...

I'm kind of the same boat. It's strange as I noticed a big difference going from a Yammie MD8 channel strip, where none of the mic's seemed to be really noticeably different...then my first DMP3/RNC combo was like really nice to hear....then I went to upgrade that and more and then the VST/UX2 preamps seem to be able to match about anything ,as long as the gain isnt full blast then it requires a noise gate to silence the pre's noise.... but thats not a big deal.

All I cans ay is the ISA One gets there faster, but the software once tweaked in and stored as a setting for recall.... works just fine too, for what Im doing which is home hobbyist.
 
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