In the $200-$500 range, you've got the FMR RNP, ART MPA Gold (or Digital MPA), Grace 101 (for a few bucks more), Rane MS1B, SP VTB1, M-Audio DMP3, GT Brick . . . and these are all pres with lots of experience out there, they come with warranties, and you can have them at your door this week. And I have seen many PCBs, I guarantee you ART and Rane (and EH too, forgot them) look nothing like that one.
Wait. You've seen the PCB?
I didn't realize the Grace was quite that cheap. As for the others, the brick is nothing special from what I've seen of it. I pick my $20/channel Peavey mixer pres over the brick with regularity.... M-Audio pres are good, but they're hardly outstanding---a little brittle. I'm not that familiar with ART and Rane.
Or if you want to try DIY, there are the Gyraf designs, the Five Fish kit, all the lunchbox stuff . . .
It pretty much goes without saying that you can build something high quality for less than the cost of buying it pre-built from a boutique hardware manufacturer.
To extrapolate from the mic experience, this is my review: the first description of the condenser mics was, and I think this is a near quote, the brightest mics the poster had ever heard. In the sound samples posted, I thought the tube mic sounded nice. The ribbons sounded like ribbons, so no trouble there. I tended to agree with the poster's reaction to the other condenser mics.
Yup. Chinese FET condensers are universally junk, and I'm actually pretty impressed that the tubes tame that as much as they do. The capsules are pretty awful and inconsistent. That's why I only bought tubes and ribbons. As I understand it, with the exception of the first FET LDC on the products page, that was what almost everybody else did, too.
At a similar price multiple you claimed for the preamp, do you really think there isn't a better condenser mic? Say up to $300? You're talking Shure KSM27, 109, or SM81, AT3035 (or even AT2020), and their SDCs, the SP C range . . . people seem to like the CADs, and even the MXL tracks I've heard sounded fine in comparison.
There is such a glut of cheap Chinese mics that you can guarantee to be able to get a mic that is almost identical in every way for not dramatically more money. The only exceptions are the custom designs like the ACM-310. I haven't had enough time to track with that to have an opinion of it.
By contrast, I haven't seen a glut of well designed, mass-manufactured preamps out there. The cheap pres that I've seen people analyze have been cloned from designs by companies like Mackie, whose pres are lackluster at best to begin with, IMHO. Then, they cut corners like putting lots of electrolytic caps throughout the signal path. The resulting pres sound like you'd expect....
It's true the group buy was a good deal for ribbons, especially since it seems that some of the "professional" importers aren't doing any ribbon QC either. But if you look to Shinybox or one of the others who supposedly are inspecting or swapping trannies, that could still be a better path (albeit pricey) for those not comfortable with repair..
Agreed. Again, though, that's a problem that's very specific to ribbon mics. I can't imagine we'd find even a 1% defect rate on something involving what I suspect will involve a bunch of components placed onto a PCB by robots and wave soldered....
So from my outside perspective, it's been a mixed bag. That's hardly the kind of basis for the statement you made above.
Yes, it's a mixed bag. It's also a fairly well understood mixed bag with a lot of problems that are specific to microphones. I'm a lot more comfortable buying Chinese-manufactured products that don't involve any complex mechanical work like capsule manufacture. Heck, every computer I've bought in the last ten years falls into that category.
