famous beagle
Well-known member
Is there another part of the MOTU name? I searched MOTU MKiii and nothing matched exactly. Was it the MKiii Ultralite or something else?
interface pres vs. external pres
- Thread starter famous beagle
- Start date
Is there another part of the MOTU name? I searched MOTU MKiii and nothing matched exactly. Was it the MKiii Ultralite or something else?
famous beagle
Well-known member
I love it. It really just is different strokes.
Chili
Site Moderator
I used to use a focusrite twintrack platinum pre with the opto-compressor built in. It added a really nice signature sound that I liked. Since getting my Apollo, the focusrite has been collecting dust. (I should really sell that thing) The Apollo can run plugs that control the hardware settings on the mic pre. That's a pretty cool feature, but I'm still searching for the right settings for me.
famous beagle
Well-known member
I would really love to hear a direct comparison of the same song tracked with, say, Apogee converters and something more prosumer, like my Tascam US-1800 to hear the difference.
Tadpui
Well-known member
Yeah I had forgotten the exact name. It was the MOTU Mkiii Ultralite Hybrid. I use Win7 x64, and that interface refused to cooperate. Via USB it would go haywire, disappear from my system, and emit a deafening high-pitched sine wave until I hard-reset it, uninstalled and reinstalled. A giant pain. Via FireWire, it would cause my machine to blue screen (still to this day the only blue screens I've ever encountered in several years of using Win7). I don't have patience for such behavior from my studio equipment, so I returned it and bought the RME instead. One of my best decisions ever, even at 3x the price.
famous beagle
Well-known member
Cool ... which Apollo model do you have?
famous beagle
Well-known member
Oh yeah ... ouch. I don't have much patience for computer gear either. I'm with you on that.
Chili
Site Moderator
I have the Duo. It's a great unit and I have a nice little collection of UAD plugs.
I don't completely agree with this. The conversion is really low on the list of things that affect sonic quality. I used to have Lavry Blacks and a Phonic Helix; two opposite extremes of the spectrum. While there was some difference in sound, there wasn't as much as you'd expect. Everything else comes into play before the conversion does. Mics, pres, room, skills, etc.
Tadpui
Well-known member
Now that you mention it, when I started using that MOTU, I was using its built-in preamp. That's probably a lot of the difference from the RNP->Delta44. But I have to say, the RNP->FireFace sounds pretty damn good. It never sounded all that great into the Delta44. I always just chalked it up to the converters.
Actually one place where excellent converters comes in handy is when looping back out of the box and thru hardware. When I record bass, I use ReaInsert to loop in a hardware compressor. Its amazing the fidelity (and low latency) that I still hear when the signal is coming into the box, leaving again, coming back in, and then going to the monitors. It gets converted ADC and DAC twice and still sounds damn good!
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
I can say with certainty that the $1000 or so UA Solo 610 has a substantial impact on the sound of many sources, but not always for the better. It was purchased (not by me) as a bass DI, but it turned out to make the bass too fat and lack definition. When we tried it with vocals through an AT4050 it was like magic. The brittleness of the 4050 was smoothed off to a nice warm, but still clear, tone.
That said, 99% of what I track is through the pres on the Tascam M-2600 MkII board.
That said, 99% of what I track is through the pres on the Tascam M-2600 MkII board.
Armistice
Son of Yoda
Amen to all of this ^^^^
Been asking Sound on Sound! Couple of years ago they did perhaps THE mic pre amp "shootout"* and although there were and continue to be naysayers, it is now pretty well accepted that unless you drive them into "attitude" mode, most competently designed pre amps sound the same, regardless of price.
Indeed! I believe that information has been absorbed into the general recording paradigm? Five years ago many people here would have said "F***! Of course a $1000 pre is going to sound better than a $100 one and LOADS better than the $5 ***t in your interface!" The bare fact remains that it costs relatively little these days to make a really rather good pre amp.
In my 10yrs of reading SoS I have seen 3 or 4 tests of interfaces where the converter quality was carefully compared. I say "carefully" because it is not a trivial task. Levels have to be very well matched, better than 0.5dB and the monitors and room beyond reproach, can't test "goodness" on a bad system.
In those few results the comment was always much the same. Yes, system A WAS different from system B (and/or C in some cases) but it was small and hard to define. In several cases the "preferred" system swapped with musical genre!
* "They" do not like the term "shootout" but it is hard to think of another word!
Dave.
Bobbsy
Boring Old Git
Dave, that theory works well if you're like me (and many others) who think a mic pre amp should simply add clean gain and not otherwise affect your audio.
Where expensive specialist pre amps come into their own is generally when people want the pre amp to add some form of colouration that they consider desirable. If they're after a "warmer" or "grittier" or any one of a thousand other "ers" and a pre amp gives you that, then great. It's not for me but everyone's needs and likes are different.
Where expensive specialist pre amps come into their own is generally when people want the pre amp to add some form of colouration that they consider desirable. If they're after a "warmer" or "grittier" or any one of a thousand other "ers" and a pre amp gives you that, then great. It's not for me but everyone's needs and likes are different.
Yes Bobbs, and this is precisely why the SoS tests were done very carefully so as not to drive any pre amp into even mild distortion. This was a very important point as the tests must have been time consuming and expensive to do (they used an acoustic but MIDI played grand) and it was vital (imho) to set a benchmark.
The result was that, although not stringently "scientific" statistically it seems VERY unlikely that anyone can choose between basically good mic pre amps, regardless of price.
The toner was barely dry on the copy when people started muddying the water by claiming their Neves sounded WAAAAAY better than brand X! Valve and transformer "warmf" was bandied ad inf!
Naturally there have been calls for another series of tests but this time pushing the pres' into some form of "colour". This would be very difficult to do and get any meaningful result. Driving pre amp A to produce 1%thd (at 1kHz?) would need a different voltage from pre amps B, C, D...did-da.
Then, of course, the "nice in overload but expensive" brigade should be careful what they ask for! The blind results MIGHT throw up a gloriously sounding Behringer X802!
There is of course MUCH more to a quality pre amp than just bare performance. Build quality, extra features and we can reasonably expect several lifetimes of near zero failure!
Dave.
bouldersoundguy
Well-known member
The substantial difference that we noticed between the Tascam M-2600 pres and the Solo 610 did not seem to be level dependent. It's pretty clear when the 610 gets into it's "attitude" zone and I don't really like it there so I give it a wide berth. Its inherent sound is present at any gain setting.