£500 pre's - SPL GoldMike v FMR RNP - Opinions.

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Mr Funk

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Hi folks

The next item on my shopping list (having already got some new mics and a RNC) is a new dual pre amp to replace the DMP2 pre's in my Omni Studio. The GoldMike and the RNP seem to be the only ones in the price range (£500). I have read many good things about the RNP, but how does the SPL compare?

I am hoping for the most 'expensive' sounding!
 
jeez 500 pounds for an rnp.

can't you get one shipped from the USA and take advantage of the exchange rate, its only $475 here, 500 pounds will practically get you two of them! and for that matter the gold mike goes for like $350 on ebay when they show up!


anyway, i always wonder about that gold mike, cause it seems pretty decent, and they are pretty cheap used...

anyone, anyone...
 
this brings up another point, anyone know where i can find the damn brittish pound key on my american widows 2000 keyboard?
 
On the UK Keyboard, the Shift + '3' is the '£' symbol and Shift + '4' is the '$' symbol. Try them the other way round maybe?

Anyway, I have considered getting an RNP from the US. How much is a new Gold Mike?

Anyone in the US or anywhere using the SPL with good results?
 
this is cute. american keyboards the shift 3 is also the pound, but a different one. the american phone pound, the #.

let me try some stuff here... (trying alt, control, shift combos) nope not getting it... oh well.

i have an SPL charisma, which is a wildly overpriced distortion pedal. but i use it all the time. cause it is also a really great distortion pedal. anyway, i only paid like $160 for it... but the people who paid $500 have to be kicking themselves.
 
Mr Funk
I am looking at buying a Goldmike. What I have found in researching is that the people that have this unit are big fans, but there seems to be not many of them made and the price is steadily going up on them. The Goldmike whent up in price in the UK I believe after there introduction, and are going up by 100 US in June (some due to exchange issues). And one dealer I talked to in the UK said that he thought there might be an increase in price there as well.


Since You are on the other side of the ocean, you might consider the one on ebay now, with a buy option of 395 GBP.

The cheapest I have been able to find in the US is $775 plus $25 shipping.

The only dealer I talked to that was not impressed with the unit was from MacMidi, and he had not used one, but just said that their productline was either great or mediocur, And He had not had enough demand for the product to stock it. Every one that has used one, seems to be impressed (Both dealers and consumers).
 
Now, I really don't mind recommending a German product, and in fact SPL does manufacture some nice processors (Transient Designer, their deesser) but the Goldmike probably won't be much of an advantage over the DMP-2. The Goldmike is basically solid state and uses Analog Devices SSM2017 chips (they even say so on the webpage). It's only an additional 6 dB gain that come out of the tube stage behind the actual preamp. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think the DMP-2 uses the very same chips. And there's only a handful of resistors and capacitators necessary to build the actual preamp around those chips, so the two are probably *very* similar except for the Goldmike's tube stage and some circuits for metering etc.
 
yea, except i have an earthworks pre that uses a 2017 and it sounds a bunch better than my symetrix 202 which uses a nicer opamp chip. i think a 2015 or something like that...

all these opamps spec out pretty nicely, those very few other components make a really big difference.

what makes the gold mike look sort of cool is that it is not a clean and clear pre, but what is scary is that... well... color can be good or bad.
 
O.T. ?
Hold down the 'alt ' key and type a number between 1 and 255 to get the ascii character equivalent of that number. For example...
alt+156 = £
alt+157 = ¢

Does that help?
 
In most cases, it's supposedly more difficult and expensive to build a good-sounding mic pre out of an ssm2017 chip.

As it is, it produces too much HF distortion.

Apparently, Earthworks have figured out a way to get around this issue (which is a big reason for the $600 + price tag), and to a smaller extent symetrix have managed to lessen it a bit with the 302. But still, there are too many people whom I respect who have too many bad things to say about mic pres built around the ssm2017.

And the dmp3 is based on one of the popular mixer chips -- can't remember which one it is -- same as the Mackie, but not 2017 from what I gather.

Good news is the 2017 has been discontinued, and THE is coming out with a drop-in replacement calle the 1510 that is supposed to sound worlds better. There's a lot of hype around it in the geek community, from what I gather, and they've been delaying it's release.

Sorry for getting so off-topic. Anyway, once THE decide to come out with that new chip, there could be a lot of home rec'ers dancing in the streets. Most of us probably have one if not more mic pres built around this chip . . . and we could all be looking at an idiot-proof, serious upgrade in sound for about $5 and 5 minutes worth of work.
 
Chessrock (or anyone):

Do you know if the DMP2 pre amps in the Omni Studio do use the 2017 chips?

Do you know if the Gold Mike is one of the companies that have actually found out how to make the most of the 2017 chips? I have heard very good things about it? Check out some of the links above to reviews.

If the DMP2's do use the 2017 chips, would I be better swapping out the chips in the Omni Studio to the new 1510 ones, rather than buying a Gold Mike?

Cheers
 
Holy shit . . .

Curiosity finally got the best of me, so I just popped the hood on the DMP3, and fished around to see what was in there.

To my surprize, unless my eyes are totally messing with me, I saw two burr-brown INA163s in there, clear as day.


Mr. Funk, I would either email m-audio tech support and ask them, or have a look inside of yours and find out for yourself. If yours has the INA163 . . . or even it's discontinued predecessor, the INA103, I wouldn't touch it. :D

As far as the Goldmic goes, it really all depends, but I'm definitely seeing a couple of red flags, here: it's a hybrid design, and it uses the 2017 chip. Nothing necessarily wrong with any of that, but it just kinda' screams "consumer-level." In clean mode, it might not be any better than your omni studio, and the tube element isn't going to sound anything like a real tube pre will, so what's the point?

INA163s in the DMP3. Who woulda' thunk it?
 
Personally, I don't get too much into this or that IC of the week... Truth is, IC application has much more influence on the "sound" than the actual IC itself.
 
True, but the whole "garbage-in / garbage-out" theory has to apply to an extent.

You can't deny that quality components are going to play a role.

All other things equal, using mullard tubes, Jensen transformers (and I've heard bad transformers -- they ain't pretty), Burr-brown opamps . . . even Valley People VCA's to an extent . . .

. . . they have an effect on the sound.

And if several well-respected tech engineers tell me that a particular component sounds so bad, that a more complex and expensive design has to be implemented in order to get around it's crappy sound in order to make it usable -- I take note of that.
 
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Of course I can't deny that quality components play a role... A rather significant at that...

Still, regardless, there are plenty of well-respected tech engineers who will tell you a particular opamp sounds like total dog-shit when the truth is that the way the opamp was used is what really sounds like total dog-shit.
 
And from what I've heard of the 2017, "plugging something in to it" is all that is required in order to make it sound like doggie doo-doo. :D
 
If that's what you think of the Earthworks, then I suppose you're right.

Anyway, not disagreeing, just stating what I have.

By the way, if anyone cares, the VLZ-PRO preamps are based around 3 NJM2068 opamps, 3 MMBT4403 PNP transistors, and 2 2SA1084 PNP transistors... As you can see, a lot of crap for a simple function...

Oh, the Yamaha 02R also uses the NJM2068 in its analog circuitry...
 
I got the Goldmike, so I'll post the pros and cons out of my own experience, hope it helps.

Pros:
  • Transparent sounding. Flat within 0.5dB 10-100.000Hz
  • 72dB input gain, extra juice (compared to the normal 60db) for ribbons and some problematic dynamics
  • Dual Mono Block design, which enhances channel separation and stereo depth
  • Flair function, which adds a great "expensive" sparkle to acoustic guitars and other instruments
  • Very smooth gain knobs.....better than those on units x10 the price, seriously.
  • 80Hz HP filter, phase reverse.
  • Looks great in the rack.

Cons:
  • Small VU Meters, although they're much better than none at all.. and as you usually set the level and that's it, they work fine. But a bit small nevertheless.
  • The PAD is a whopping 30dB, way too much for my taste.


Hope that helps a bit.
/Stefan
 
Recording Engineer said:
If that's what you think of the Earthworks, then I suppose you're right.
Click to expand...

Actually, earthworks managed to get it right -- but supposedly it required some clever work-arounds that might not have been necessary had a better component been used in the first place.
 
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