Preamp question?

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allofme

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My band is about to record and we were going to pick up the Presonus Studio Tube channel strip to help us get a more professional sound. We were also going to pick up a Roland Octacapture so we can record our drums. I read about the rolands preamp being top notch. Will using the presonus with the Roland give me better sound or are the both units basically giving me the same thing? Thanks!
 
They are probably both going to be giving you much the same thing - the channel strip has some nice features but nothing you can't do later on in your DAW. I haven't used one but based on reviews etc and feedback on the internet I'd guesstimate that it will be a bit nicer and different sounding to the preamps in the Roland, but probably not earth shatteringly better.

Looking at the inputs on the Roland you would have to feed the signal from the channel strip through one of the preamps on the roland anyway (albeit with no gain applied).
 
To get professional sound you have to pay somebody to record it. That is the difference between pro and amateur.

One would hope that the "pro" would have knowledge and experience, pay attention to important details, and do the best he can to capture the best sounds possible with whatever gear is available.

OTOH - the amateur has no idea what he's doing or why. Maybe he follows the advice of some random people on the Internet, buys all the "best" gear (given his budget), and still fucks the whole thing up.

;)
 
allofme said:
My band is about to record and we were going to pick up the Presonus Studio Tube channel strip to help us get a more professional sound. We were also going to pick up a Roland Octacapture so we can record our drums. I read about the rolands preamp being top notch. Will using the presonus with the Roland give me better sound or are the both units basically giving me the same thing? Thanks!
Click to expand...

Have any of you guys done any recording before...?
If so...did you get a satisfactory "professional sound" from those efforts...?

How's that old blues song go...

"It ain't the meat...it's the motion."
 
To answer the question directly: The presonus is not going to be the most awesome thing ever. Actual tube preamps are expensive to make, so in order to make a tube preamp with a compressor and an EQ in the same box for around $300 is a hint and a half that it isn't the greatest preamp. You would be hard pressed to find a quality tube preamp by itself for less than twice that price.

If you spent that money on a good solid state preamp, you would be better off. But you still have the problem of having to run it through the Roland preamps, which means that the sound you record will only be as good as the Roland preamps let it.

Save your money on the channel strip. The difference in preamp quality at this price point will not make or break the production. In other words, if it ends up sounding bad, it's not going to be the preamp's fault.
 
As a general rule, the more devices you have in a signal path, the more noise you will be adding to the signal. That will raise what is known as the "noise floor" - the level of background noise that is difficult to remove. The noise floor keeps rising as you add more channels, so an important basic idea is to minimize the added noise at every opportunity. That means using balanced microphone cables instead of unbalanced cables and so forth. It also means keeping the input signal as clean and as simple as you can on its way to being recorded.

You're suggesting linking two preamps together. Experiment and see what happens. While it won't "hurt" anything, I doubt it will help. The only thing you can be certain of is that you will introduce a little more noise into the signal. The Roland preamp is very likely to be quite workable, as will be the PreSonus unit. So use them, but try not to make anything more complicated than need be.

Aim for the best sound you know how to get and stop worrying about whether it is "pro" sound. It almost certainly will not be "pro" grade. But it may very well sound great anyway. Do it and learn as you go.
 
ashcat_lt said:
OTOH - the amateur has no idea what he's doing or why. Maybe he follows the advice of some random people on the Internet, buys all the "best" gear (given his budget), and still fucks the whole thing up.
Click to expand...

Essentially, yes. Getting a pro sound is much more about the experience and skill of the engineer and the quality of musicianship available, and taking the time to do things 'right'. To that end, the channel strip probably isn't going to make or break the project.

Save the money and do some 'demos' and practise recordings before you try and record a whole EP/album and the time spent will get you a bigger improvement than the money spent on the channel strip.
 
ashcat_lt said:
OTOH - the amateur has no idea what he's doing or why. Maybe he follows the advice of some random people on the Internet, buys all the "best" gear (given his budget), and still fucks the whole thing up.
Click to expand...

Loved that. I am in this category and probably will stay there!

:D

On a side note, I don't know if I am being too drastic but... the fact is that I grew up playing guitar in a few garage bands in middle 80s. At that time you only had two types of studio recordings: demo tapes and industry stuff (Sony, WEA, etc). Period. It really left some scars inside me. Till now, when I hear someone telling the 'pro' word referring to studio work I really cannot see it happening unless it is going to be recorded, mixed and mastered at an industry studio. Anything else -- being home recorders or commercial small studios -- still sounds like a demo tape for me. For sure they are too much better than it used to be 30 years ago (absolutely no doubt about this) but still not comparable to the quality of the veteran giants (AKA commercial recordings). But maybe it's just me.

:p
 
YanKleber said:
Loved that. I am in this category and probably will stay there!

:D

On a side note, I don't know if I am being too drastic but... the fact is that I grew up playing guitar in a few garage bands in middle 80s. At that time you only had two types of studio recordings: demo tapes and industry stuff (Sony, WEA, etc). Period. It really left some scars inside me. Till now, when I hear someone telling the 'pro' word referring to studio work I really cannot see it happening unless it is going to be recorded, mixed and mastered at an industry studio. Anything else -- being home recorders or commercial small studios -- still sounds like a demo tape for me. For sure they are too much better than it used to be 30 years ago (absolutely no doubt about this) but still not comparable to the quality of the veteran giants (AKA commercial recordings). But maybe it's just me.

:p
Click to expand...


Things may be different in Brazil. Here in the US, 'indie radio' is filled with lo-fi recordings that could be recorded anywhere/by anyone.
 
mjbphotos said:
Things may be different in Brazil. Here in the US, 'indie radio' is filled with lo-fi recordings that could be recorded anywhere/by anyone.
Click to expand...

Sure, I got your point. I wasn't talking about the space for bands in radios though, but about quality itself. I think I couldn't explain myself correctly. What I mean is that for some reason -- for my ears -- the stuff made by small studios is not comparable with thing produced by multimillionaire record labels. No matter what, if you put a job of a small studio aside a Sony job for instances, the Sony one will be better in all matters. Probably because they have decades of experience and a ton of money to burn in the preparation of spectacular recording environments and in the buying of top-notch equipment.

:)
 
YanKleber said:
No matter what, if you put a job of a small studio aside a Sony job for instances, the Sony one will be better in all matters. Probably because they have decades of experience and a ton of money to burn in the preparation of spectacular recording environments and in the buying of top-notch equipment.

:)
Click to expand...
Some of it is the space and equipment, but most of it is the amount of time and the number of top notch people that they throw at it.

Nearly everything is done in a DAW. The DAW doesn't care what kind of a room it's in. It's mostly people taking the time to properly capture, edit and mix that makes the difference. For a lot of things, it could be done in a small studio. But, for the most part, if the project is being done in a small studio, it doesn't have the budget to take the amount of time that is required to compete with big budget projects.
 
You nailed it Farview. All in all it never will be a fair battle! ;)
 
Course "better" is a subjective term. Sometimes ultra clean a perfect and "pro" is not necessarily the best thing for the material.
 
ashcat_lt said:
Course "better" is a subjective term. Sometimes ultra clean a perfect and "pro" is not necessarily the best thing for the material.
Click to expand...

True, but when you have all the time in the world and access to all the equipment in the world and all the expertise, you can make something the exact kind of grungy that it needs to be. (as opposed to the sort of grungy that happens by accident)
 
I totally agree that a $300 valve pre amp is not going to be stellar but a $300 second hand Audient Mico would be very good, IF you can find one and it usefully feed the S/PDIF input so no problem with the "pre into pre" debacle.

In practice however, padding down a mic pre amp to get a line input is a very common practice on even some highish end gear and done properly need add minimal noise to the proceedings (probably the same opamp in the mic and line circuits anyway!) In any event, the main use of an external pre amp is for some "attitude" and the kludged mic/line circuitry is unlikely to affect that.

Whether you NEED another pre amp is debatable. If you need 10 mic channels start looking for a S/H Mico!

Dave.
 
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