Tube mike VS. Mike with tube pre-amp

To kind of answer your question....

In your price range, I would stay away from tube gear. Tube gear costs at least twice as much than the same quality solid state gear.

A $500 one channel solid state mic preamp will probably be pretty respectable.

A $500 one channel tube mic preamp will be a borderline pile of crap in comparison.
 
Farview said:
To kind of answer your question....

In your price range, I would stay away from tube gear. Tube gear costs at least twice as much than the same quality solid state gear.

A $500 one channel solid state mic preamp will probably be pretty respectable.

A $500 one channel tube mic preamp will be a borderline pile of crap in comparison.
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Yep, that nails it. Bang for buck, solid state is the way to go. Tube gear can function very nicely for a price, but on a budget SS works fine, perhaps great depending on the piece. You won't be wasting all your mojo because of SS mic pre's or SS mics, that's for sure.

I own a MXL 960, swapped the Chinese tube with a Telefunken 12AT7, and the results are nice. This mic has a place in a moderate budget studio. I bought it mostly to mod it/improve it, but ended up liking it compared to the other mics I had and borrowed so I left it the way it was. And I like to mod things, I'm almost tempted to get another for the purpose of modding out. For a budget vocal mic, this is indeed nice. The thing I hate about the MXL's is the cheapness of the hardware, I can't recall ever seeing softer metal anywhere. Might was well be mercury for the lock screws. Plastic would do a better job.

And MSHilarious, you got me on the high powered radio transmission, forgot all about the 50,000 watt broadcast tubes. ;) Ever seen the price on those suckers? :eek: The MSH-1's are great, btw! I must have gotten about the last pair. Glad I squeaked in on that!
 
A $500 one channel solid state mic preamp will probably be pretty respectable.

A $500 one channel tube mic preamp will be a borderline pile of crap in comparison.
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does that include the GT brick? ($399)
I have one and love it. (but it is my best mic pre and I have never had the pleasure of using higher end pre's)
 
That preamp is fine, but it doesn't have much gain and doesn't really have any 'magic'. It's really just this side of being crap, there is a huge difference between that and the vipre.
 
pylet2000 said:
And MSHilarious, you got me on the high powered radio transmission, forgot all about the 50,000 watt broadcast tubes. ;) Ever seen the price on those suckers? :eek: The MSH-1's are great, btw! I must have gotten about the last pair. Glad I squeaked in on that!
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...there are individual tubes that will generate that kind of power? I need websites and pictures stat.
 
Vagodeoz said:
Makes sense... but doesn't it works the other way around with pre-amps?
The tube pre-amp will also need a tube and some extra stuff I have no idea about.
So let's say... a DMP3 (about 150$ for two channels, it's supposed to be the best pre-amp on it's price range) vs a Studio Projects VTB1 (which is about 120$ for one channel, and it's supposed to be the best tube option at it's price point)
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No, because most cheap pres use AC adaptors. That means there is a big compromise in the power supply from a tube point of view (the RNP manages solid state with the adaptor just fine). Strictly speaking, the manufacturer could use an AC-AC adaptor, and some of them do, and put a step-up transformer inside the box for the plate supply. Or a DC-DC converter, but to get the voltage that high . . . might be tricky. The moral of the story is that there is usually a compromise in the power supply design.

Now, once you step up to the tube mic price point, the manufacturers don't seem to mind the proper power supply. Why that doesn't trickle down to preamps, I don't know (actually the ART MPA Gold is full plate, at $300 for two channels).
 
pink floyd (atom heart mother), beatles, the doors
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By Atom Heart Mother and Abbey Road, EMI was using EMI solid state desks. Don't know about the Doors, but by '68 (in the states)-'69, almost all major label work was being done on solid state consoles (an exception would be Muscle Shoals through the very early 70's).
 
Well list on the Brick is $499 and street price is $399. It is about the least expensive real tube pre out there (maybe with the exception of the EH which I've never used). There just isn't much else around at that price point or below that is of reasonable quality. Next step up for a currently produced unit would probably be a UA Solo, Sebatron or Demeter pre. Some of the Summit models may fit in there as well. For discontinued used gear, the Peavey VMP-2 is still a deal at $600-800 for 2 channels, DI and basic EQ, and the GT MP-1 is quite good for @$400 (single channel), but they are somewhat rare. Then we start talking Millennia, Pendulum and A-Designs, among others, which start at @$800-1000 a channel and go up from there.
 
Really you just have to use YOUR ears and decide if you actually like the sound of the preamps in question. Getting distracted with technical stuff like plate voltage and circuit topology isn't going to tell you if you actually like the sound.

Yes it's true starved plate stuff is technically inferior, and yes solid state gear at budget prices is inferior and yada yada, but you may still like the sound of it anyway.

Sure I would love to have a Summit 2BA-221 or to build a Gyraf G-IX but sometimes all I need is a color. In times like this I have several options at my disposal and yet a noisy cheap TubePre is what I might select. If it gets me the sound I need I really ain't too picky about whether it is cheap or expensive, tube or SS, etc. etc.

Some folks like Pepsi and some like Coke yet others prefer Chteau La Mondotte Saint-Emilion 1996. Hey if it quenches your thirst then drink it.
 
There are so many good choices that don't have to cost an arm and a leg. I have an old shure m67 microphone mixer that I use as a pre. I describe it as a vintage sound. It has no tubes and is transformer balanced. These have been around a long time. I don't know exactly how old the one I have is.

Eddie Kramer used three of these to record all of the live music at the Woodstock music festival in 1969. If that is the sound you are looking for it sounds good.

You can find them on ebay. $50 - $75 for one in good to excellent condition and you have a lot of bang for the buck.
 
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Recently I have been getting into the analog part of recording, and I love a good analog sound (Pink Floyd...).
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if i'm reading you correctly, you're looking for an "analog" sound and are posting in the "analog" forum. everyone else is free to correct me if i'm wrong (like you guys need permission), but the "analog" sound you're talking about is related to the final medium you're recording to rather than the signal path leading up to it.

tube mic-->tube pre-->hard disk="digital sound."

solid state mic-->solid state pre-->hard disk="digital sound."

tube mic-->tube pre-->TAPE="analog sound."

solid state mic-->solid state pre-->TAPE="analog sound."

you're confusing the signal path with the recording media. a hard disk reads digital bits and encodes the information. tape is magnetized and imprints the information. i think the "analog sound" you're looking for is found in the tape, not the signal.

but there's really no reason why you can't get a warm sound on digital media these days. the complaints of "cold" sounding digital recordings are pretty much a thing of the past with the current technology (unless you're a chronic nostalgic sourpuss like steve albini).

the only thing that makes analog tape "superior" to digital is the smoothed-out saturation of transient peaks, which was simply distortion that naturally mellows out due to the physical properties of tape. digital machines are unforgiving in this respect, but that's easily defeated by setting up your gear to NOT CLIP--maybe all you need is a decent limiter!!!

but now you have to ask, analog limiter or solid state limiter??? :eek::D
 
Perhaps one is confusing the "tube sound" with "analog tape" sound, or a combination of the two. Most likely, with all the solid state gear that was the "technological breakthrough" of the sixties and early seventies, these great sounds only passed through tubes in U47 and similar mics. At the time, the low cost, much quieter transistor was the way to go. SSL (Solid State Logic) didn't get their name from tube technology. Don't get me wrong, tube circuitry has a place in music, tubes do have qualities that solid state circuits can't replicate. Just don't think that a tube mic with a tube preamp will deliver the same sounds. A lot of other work went into producing the music you love so dearly, eq, compression, reverb, on and on.
 
mshilarious said:
Of course, the tube could simply be followed by a solid-state stage, which wouldn't lose the voltage like the transformer does, but: a) that would be a really hot output signal, and b) transformers are cool :cool:
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As a matter of fact, the CAD M9 does just that, using a tube as the buffer and a FET as the line driver. :D
 
Somnium7 said:
I read in a few places this mic uses a dual opamp for the driver.
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You know, there is a lot of merit to using an opamp as a driver. The only trick is the current; most extra-quiet opamps want more current than phantom can really deliver. Even so, a quiet FET followed by a low-current opamp is a nifty thing. The ability of an opamp to go rail-to-rail (or just get close) and not distort is a thing of beauty. I was very tempted to do an opamp mic myself . . .

I think the CAD mics that use opamps draw something like 7 or 8mA, which could be trouble for some below-spec preamps. I was playing with OPA2277, which only draws 0.8mA per amp . . . and you don't really need a dual opamp, I just happened to have the dual version laying around.
 
mshilarious said:
You know, there is a lot of merit to using an opamp as a driver. The only trick is the current; most extra-quiet opamps want more current than phantom can really deliver. Even so, a quiet FET followed by a low-current opamp is a nifty thing. The ability of an opamp to go rail-to-rail (or just get close) and not distort is a thing of beauty. I was very tempted to do an opamp mic myself . . .

I think the CAD mics that use opamps draw something like 7 or 8mA, which could be trouble for some below-spec preamps. I was playing with OPA2277, which only draws 0.8mA per amp . . . and you don't really need a dual opamp, I just happened to have the dual version laying around.
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I agree, opamps can be a blessing as line drivers. The performance available on todays low-noise units is nothing if not impressive. Combine that with high CMRR, speed and current sourcing, we have the opamps most could only dream about just 15 years ago.

I'm using the AD845 in my mic preamp design and I'm planning to evaluate the AD843 for use in another application. These devices are simply amazing. Even working with circuits on the breadboard I find the sound quality I hear fantastic.

For your application consider the OPA2107, which has even lower current consumption and better slew rate. The 2277 is on the sluggish end of the spectrum with only 0.8V/ns. Not much better than the trusty old 741.
I'm not sure what the part number is but they must have a single channel version of the 2107 too.
 
Somnium7 said:
For your application consider the OPA2107, which has even lower current consumption and better slew rate. The 2277 is on the sluggish end of the spectrum with only 0.8V/ns. Not much better than the trusty old 741.
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OPA2107 draws 2.5mA/channel. Also, the minimum voltage on 2107 is 9V, vs. 4V for OPA2277. I always strive to make my designs operate on the lowest possible supply voltage, and since the opamp's rails can't be driven straight from the mic pins, you have to give up a bit to supply resistors. I had OPA2277 working down to a 9V phantom supply across 4k7 resistors (and then 3k3 inside the mic). It would have worked even lower in the single version, but I decided a transformer was a better solution--a lot of portable recorders will only give you 0.5mA as it is . . .

Also, there really isn't a need for a high slew rate in a unity gain mic buffer. The signal level would rarely even approach 0.8V peak to peak, much less in a nsec. In fact, with the capsules I use, the internal FETs overload right around that point.
 
mshilarious said:
OPA2107 draws 2.5mA/channel. Also, the minimum voltage on 2107 is 9V, vs. 4V for OPA2277. I always strive to make my designs operate on the lowest possible supply voltage, and since the opamp's rails can't be driven straight from the mic pins, you have to give up a bit to supply resistors. I had OPA2277 working down to a 9V phantom supply across 4k7 resistors (and then 3k3 inside the mic). It would have worked even lower in the single version, but I decided a transformer was a better solution--a lot of portable recorders will only give you 0.5mA as it is . . .

Also, there really isn't a need for a high slew rate in a unity gain mic buffer. The signal level would rarely even approach 0.8V peak to peak, much less in a nsec. In fact, with the capsules I use, the internal FETs overload right around that point.
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Oh, I thought you were using the device as a line driver. Where did I see those specs anyway... OPA344 may be worth looking at. I agree with you on using the transformer, it's an elegant solution.
 
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