Help with matching sources and pres

BeniRose

BeniRose

New member
I'm currently running an ART Digital MPA into a Focusrite Saffire Pro 26 i/o (the old ones that were actually sapphire) and am fairly happy with how these guys sound, but am wanting to upgrade to some slightly cleaner pre-amps (as you might know if you saw my other thread). I realized that maybe it's not my pre-amps but possibly the way I'm using them that could be having an effect on the sound I'm hoping for. My current process is to typically use the MPA on kick/snare when recording drums and do the rest through my Saffire. I'll usually simultaneously record scratch tracks through the focusrite for guitar/bass, but then go back and re-record everything the the MPA. A few quick questions:

a) Is this a good idea. Are there some items that I should stick to my Focusrite pre's for?
b) Should I be running my kick and snare through the MPA or would overheads be a better idea?
c) If this is all true, what are some good $40 or less tubes to put in my MPA to help make it all sound better given what I said I'm using it for.

I do realize the correct answer to all these questions (maybe not c) is "try yourself and find out", and I plan on doing that, but I'm curious what one might say and I don't always have time or a friend around to try all this stuff out. In case anyone was wondering, I'm using mostly Rode mics (Nt2a, Nt1a, Nt5) for my condensors.
 
The whole preamp dilemma is, as usual, forest for the trees.

If you've got a variety of preamps for necessity's sake, then that's fine, use what you've got. If you want to upgrade to better ones, by all means, do so. You ultimately pay for what you get.

However, what I mean for forest for the trees (the most common syndrome in audio) is that it is a futile exercise to labour over which preamp to use for specific sources. The majority of the great, professionally produced records we all enjoy were done on a console with ONE type of preamp. Seriously. It's that simple. According to my observations, to mix and match preamps because they are supposedly better for specific sources is something that is discussed on the internet more than it is actually practiced in the making of professional-level recordings.

To say one preamp is good for kick and another good for overheads is nonsense to me simply because of the huge variety of sources and microphones that are possible to encounter. It is way more effective to focus on player, room, microphone and placement for your target sound. That, of course, comes by experimentation.

And tubes? Well, that MPA is a starved plate design so its not what a tech savvy person might call a "real" tube preamp. Tube preamps usually run on high voltage (like 300V) and a starved plate design runs around 40V. Changing the tubes might help but it's a hit or miss scenario. There are so many tubes out there, too. Get the best ones you can afford?

Hope that helps.

Cheers :)
 
I am so wanting to make ^this^ post a sticky!

There is just no correct answer for the question, without already knowing the answer. That involves way more than a mic or preamp alone.
 
If you wanted to see what a pre-amp does to a signal, you have to get an oscilloscope trace on the input signal and see how the pre-amp distorts that signal. You won't find a lot of difference in signal shape from the input to the output of a Focusrite pre. They have always been excellent pres, the only thing they change is the amplitude of the signal, not the shape. That comes later when you start applying effects to modify that shape.

Addressing your problem, if one pre-amp is changing the signal shape - processing the signal - you might want to look at the way it is being processed. I strongly doubt that the Focusrite is doing any such processing on the way through so it might be the MPA that is affecting the signal. There seem to be a few more stages that the signal goes through on the MPA vs the Focusrite so there may be some processing there that your ears agree with. There is nothing wrong with the mics you are using. You can use a large range of mics without significantly affecting the results. At the end of the day, if the MPA is doing things that modify the sound to something you prefer over the unmodified sound through the Focusrite, then go ahead and use it.

If you could post recordings using both methods, it would be easier to make a judgement call on it. Even posting them without identifying which is which would avoid biasing the responses.
 
There are many things in the recording path that can do your recordings harm. Poor performances, room acoustics, speakers, D/A convertors, bad leads and so on. If you have these all sorted out and working at optimum capacity, then a different and better pre-amp will make a difference. But if you have to deal with all these things, then forget the pre-amp. Use what you have, and focus on making the other things work for you.
 
Starved plate tube preamps add noise that we often interpret as tube warmth, (& that interpretation is easily subject to suggestion).
I have a couple a presonus blue tube and a Behri mic100. Of then two the Behri's noise sounds "nicer" to my ears but I know it's just colouring the signal & using valve/tube as a marketing tool rather than an audio tool.
You either want a preamp that clearly colours the signal (& these days this is the opposite of the ideal for digital fetishism) or one that is as transparent as possible (ideal for digital fetishism).
When I want a more "vintage" sound I use the preamps in my old, old Yamaha MT100 from the mid 80's because I know they colour the sound a little/lot.
You ought to concentrate on getting the best signal you can with what you have. Bass/kick drum being a prime example - try different mics into your existing pres, and different angles of the mic (off axis etc) to see if you can reduce some of the boom and get more bam.
You're going through a very familiar phase of HR: gear acquisition as a means of fast tracking improvement. Sadly, most of us find that that path is way up the marketer's garden whilst time spent preparing the ground and in the green house, in hindsight, is better spent that the money.
 
Mo Facta said:
According to my observations, to mix and match preamps because they are supposedly better for specific sources is something that is discussed on the internet more than it is actually practiced in the making of professional-level recordings.
Click to expand...

I must respectfully disagree with this statement. Tried and true experimentation, using ones ears as the only judge, has shown over and over again that subtleties of sound can and absolutely are influenced by a winning mic/preamp combo. So while there is no one right answer, there most certainly are combos that will sound better to your ears. It's subjective of course, but take any SDC pair and swap around pre's and there IS an audible difference. However, your ears, like anything else, get better with practice. I know it took me a number of years to begin to really discern what at first listen seemed like subtle or non-existant differences. A few years later with more practiced ears these differences, same mics, pres, room, kit, player etc, were startlingly obvious.

And yes, of course you can make a hit record on a single console. Like a $400,000 vintage Neve, for example. Not much need for external pre's there...:) but for the rest of us who don't live in professionally built studios from the 1960s, a decent selection of pre's and mics, and the understanding of how to use them on what type of source, is absolutely valuable audio knowledge and worth your time and experimentation to become familiar with.

As to your original question, If I were you I'd continue to use the ART for kick/snare and look for a cleaner, quieter stereo pre for overheads, etc. I'm particularly enamored with the FMR Audio RNP in this application, though YMMV of course.
 
Mo Facta said:
The whole preamp dilemma is, as usual, forest for the trees.

If you've got a variety of preamps for necessity's sake, then that's fine, use what you've got. If you want to upgrade to better ones, by all means, do so. You ultimately pay for what you get.

However, what I mean for forest for the trees (the most common syndrome in audio) is that it is a futile exercise to labour over which preamp to use for specific sources. The majority of the great, professionally produced records we all enjoy were done on a console with ONE type of preamp. Seriously. It's that simple. According to my observations, to mix and match preamps because they are supposedly better for specific sources is something that is discussed on the internet more than it is actually practiced in the making of professional-level recordings.

To say one preamp is good for kick and another good for overheads is nonsense to me simply because of the huge variety of sources and microphones that are possible to encounter. It is way more effective to focus on player, room, microphone and placement for your target sound. That, of course, comes by experimentation.

And tubes? Well, that MPA is a starved plate design so its not what a tech savvy person might call a "real" tube preamp. Tube preamps usually run on high voltage (like 300V) and a starved plate design runs around 40V. Changing the tubes might help but it's a hit or miss scenario. There are so many tubes out there, too. Get the best ones you can afford?

Hope that helps.

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

Hey thanks man, I totally get what you're saying and agree with you about the mix and match stuff. And yes I recognize that most classic records are made on consoles using only one pre-amp, but those were profession consoles, I'm in a home studio. This is homerecording.com after all! I realize the title is probably a bad name for my actual question. I really only have two pre-amp choices, the solid state ones built into my saffire, and the tube ones in my mpa. I would like to make sure I'm using them to their best potential. I realize that saying one specific pre-amp is better for kick and one specific pre-amp is better for overhead is a moot point, but saying "using that starved plate design pre-amp on ALL your channels might muddy up the mix a bit" isn't, nor is saying "I think the overheads will benefit from the tube warmth of the MPA more than the kick or snare" or even "If you think the MPA actually has any real tube warmth, you're kidding yourself, and I would record everything through the saffire pres". I'm not assuming any of those answers are true, just saying that's the kind of answers I was looking for.

So like I said, you're preaching to the choir. I'm not looking to buy a million pre-amps so I can mix and match and fine tune my kick pre vs my snare pre. I'd love to have a console that I knew each pre was going to get the job done and produce a professional quality recording, even if it wasn't "the best pre for that source". All I'm looking to do is optimize the tools I have. Obviously I'm going to be focusing on those other things (player, room, mic placement) but, to use a (possibly bad) analogy, that doesn't mean I can't consider that I should be using a rubber mallet over a hammer next time I go to pound in a loose nail. Hope that clears things up for you, and thanks again for your words!


sam humans said:
As to your original question, If I were you I'd continue to use the ART for kick/snare and look for a cleaner, quieter stereo pre for overheads, etc. I'm particularly enamored with the FMR Audio RNP in this application, though YMMV of course.
Click to expand...

Haha, you're the only one who actually answered my question, thanks! I have been eying the RNP, and was thinking of it. Also the GAP Pre73 sounds pretty good to me. I might get both of those and work with that for a while until I ultimately make the move to a better interface like the Ensemble.
 
BeniRose said:
Haha, you're the only one who actually answered my question, thanks! I have been eying the RNP, and was thinking of it. Also the GAP Pre73 sounds pretty good to me. I might get both of those and work with that for a while until I ultimately make the move to a better interface like the Ensemble.
Click to expand...

Ya, I noticed that too!

Also, I've no experience with the GAP 73, but understand it to be a single channel unit. Nice thing about the RNP is that it's 2 channel, perfect for stereo overheads etc. And like most FMR stuff, price vs. performance is very, very good.
 
meh, i gave my answers in the other thread and am waiting for the audio clips :thumbs up: Although i'm now more curious about the RNP. i'd still love the ISA two but appreciate that it's out of yours, and my, budget.

infact, i'd forgotten i did this a while back; a shootout between the pre's in my rack. The clips are quite long as to give people the option to download and play with them in their own DAW (i found that the differences became much more noticeable once you started applying EQ, compression and reverb).
 
sam humans said:
I must respectfully disagree with this statement. Tried and true experimentation, using ones ears as the only judge, has shown over and over again that subtleties of sound can and absolutely are influenced by a winning mic/preamp combo. So while there is no one right answer, there most certainly are combos that will sound better to your ears. It's subjective of course, but take any SDC pair and swap around pre's and there IS an audible difference. However, your ears, like anything else, get better with practice. I know it took me a number of years to begin to really discern what at first listen seemed like subtle or non-existant differences. A few years later with more practiced ears these differences, same mics, pres, room, kit, player etc, were startlingly obvious.
Click to expand...

Sure. Everything affects everything. Not going to deny that. But there are a million different colours you can mix on a palette. Knowing when and how to use them, however, is a different matter altogether. If you're a master painter with decades of experience the answer might be clear. If you're a novice, it might just complicate things and cause you to make bad decisions.

The other issue is that [to most people] the margin of tonal variation in microphones is greater than that of preamps. For someone who does not have the experience with a wide variety of preamps, it is way more worth their while to focus on the FUNDAMENTALS of recording and not the minutia of which preamp is best for a given application. It's irrelevant at that stage when the focus should rather be on the player, the environment, and the placement of the microphone.

I think people are often looking for a silver bullet to remedy their production ills. I think that when they listen to their favorite records it dumbfounds them how great it sounds and so they rationalize that there must be some sort of winning combination of gear and studio trickery that helped the engineers and producers achieve it. That is why, I think, you see so much furore over techniques and equipment and clownfuckery all over the internet when in reality it was not the esoterica of the gear but rather the performance and the careful placement of a microphone or of multiple microphones patched into a GOOD preamp that was the winning combination. Granted, there are times where experienced engineers will know that a mike/preamp combination gives a specific sound that they're after and I'm sure they'll use it but for the most part, give me one decent type of preamp and I'll make a record with it just fine.


sam humans said:
And yes, of course you can make a hit record on a single console. Like a $400,000 vintage Neve, for example. Not much need for external pre's there...:) but for the rest of us who don't live in professionally built studios from the 1960s, a decent selection of pre's and mics, and the understanding of how to use them on what type of source, is absolutely valuable audio knowledge and worth your time and experimentation to become familiar with.
Click to expand...

Or a $10 000 MCI or a $1000 Soundtracs. Not all consoles are $400 000. A company I work for just bought a Trident Series 70 for about $2000. It's got transformer balanced, class A preamps on all channels. It's a good sounding, decent desk, that many records have been made on and will continue to be made on and it has one type of preamp.

But I'm not going to disagree with you for the most part. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for having the best equipment you can afford and that includes mic pres. I'm just against obsessing over them and expecting them to instantly improve your recordings or thinking that you NEED to have a rack of Neves to accomplish a decent recording. And yes, of course knowing how and when to use them is the crux of the matter. It can take years to gain that knowledge. But OTOH, when you start combining preamps you start down a road of exponential complexity because the more combinations are at our fingertips, the more we have to keep track of the results. Discovery is great but when you want to get down to making a record, time is sometimes an issue so we reach for the most efficient workflow and for the things that we know just work.

Cheers :)
 
BeniRose said:
Hey thanks man, I totally get what you're saying and agree with you about the mix and match stuff. And yes I recognize that most classic records are made on consoles using only one pre-amp, but those were profession consoles, I'm in a home studio. This is homerecording.com after all! I realize the title is probably a bad name for my actual question. I really only have two pre-amp choices, the solid state ones built into my saffire, and the tube ones in my mpa. I would like to make sure I'm using them to their best potential. I realize that saying one specific pre-amp is better for kick and one specific pre-amp is better for overhead is a moot point, but saying "using that starved plate design pre-amp on ALL your channels might muddy up the mix a bit" isn't, nor is saying "I think the overheads will benefit from the tube warmth of the MPA more than the kick or snare" or even "If you think the MPA actually has any real tube warmth, you're kidding yourself, and I would record everything through the saffire pres". I'm not assuming any of those answers are true, just saying that's the kind of answers I was looking for.

So like I said, you're preaching to the choir. I'm not looking to buy a million pre-amps so I can mix and match and fine tune my kick pre vs my snare pre. I'd love to have a console that I knew each pre was going to get the job done and produce a professional quality recording, even if it wasn't "the best pre for that source". All I'm looking to do is optimize the tools I have. Obviously I'm going to be focusing on those other things (player, room, mic placement) but, to use a (possibly bad) analogy, that doesn't mean I can't consider that I should be using a rubber mallet over a hammer next time I go to pound in a loose nail. Hope that clears things up for you, and thanks again for your words!
.
Click to expand...

I am not here to give you the "answers". I am here to give guidance as to what I believe is the correct MINDSET. Take that as you will.

Cheers :)
 
BR,
You answered your own questions in your OP.
Other folk have simply tried to guide you to & illuminate the path & to keep you from spending in an area that isn't, at this stage, your prime sonic issue.
I've noticed quite a few folk lately joining, expecting answers that agree with their own pre concieved answers to questions and getting huffy when they aren't presented with a Gammy for best out of the box bedroom debut. Is this Gen OMG or something? This may not be you but it is an interesting trend.
a) Is this a good idea. Not really given that you have other eggs to fry in terms of getting you recording sorted but you should try yourself and find out. Are there some items that I should stick to my Focusrite pre's for? What ever works really but try yourself and find out?
b) Should I be running my kick and snare through the MPA or would overheads be a better idea? If it's a stereo jobbie & both sides are well matched then OHs are a good combo use but you should try yourself and find out.
c) If this is all true, what are some good $40 or less tubes to put in my MPA to help make it all sound better given what I said I'm using it for. They vary from batch to batch. You'd need to get matching tubes if it's a 2 tube jobbie. It REALLY won't make that much difference given that they really only supply warm noise but if you have the money then you should try yourself and find out.
 
Mo Facta said:
Sure. Everything affects everything. Not going to deny that. But there are a million different colours you can mix on a palette. Knowing when and how to use them, however, is a different matter altogether. If you're a master painter with decades of experience the answer might be clear. If you're a novice, it might just complicate things and cause you to make bad decisions.

The other issue is that [to most people] the margin of tonal variation in microphones is greater than that of preamps. For someone who does not have the experience with a wide variety of preamps, it is way more worth their while to focus on the FUNDAMENTALS of recording and not the minutia of which preamp is best for a given application. It's irrelevant at that stage when the focus should rather be on the player, the environment, and the placement of the microphone.

I think people are often looking for a silver bullet to remedy their production ills. I think that when they listen to their favorite records it dumbfounds them how great it sounds and so they rationalize that there must be some sort of winning combination of gear and studio trickery that helped the engineers and producers achieve it. That is why, I think, you see so much furore over techniques and equipment and clownfuckery all over the internet when in reality it was not the esoterica of the gear but rather the performance and the careful placement of a microphone or of multiple microphones patched into a GOOD preamp that was the winning combination. Granted, there are times where experienced engineers will know that a mike/preamp combination gives a specific sound that they're after and I'm sure they'll use it but for the most part, give me one decent type of preamp and I'll make a record with it just fine.




Or a $10 000 MCI or a $1000 Soundtracs. Not all consoles are $400 000. A company I work for just bought a Trident Series 70 for about $2000. It's got transformer balanced, class A preamps on all channels. It's a good sounding, decent desk, that many records have been made on and will continue to be made on and it has one type of preamp.

But I'm not going to disagree with you for the most part. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for having the best equipment you can afford and that includes mic pres. I'm just against obsessing over them and expecting them to instantly improve your recordings or thinking that you NEED to have a rack of Neves to accomplish a decent recording. And yes, of course knowing how and when to use them is the crux of the matter. It can take years to gain that knowledge. But OTOH, when you start combining preamps you start down a road of exponential complexity because the more combinations are at our fingertips, the more we have to keep track of the results. Discovery is great but when you want to get down to making a record, time is sometimes an issue so we reach for the most efficient workflow and for the things that we know just work.

Cheers :)
Click to expand...

Well said :)
 
Mo Facta said:
And tubes? Well, that MPA is a starved plate design so its not what a tech savvy person might call a "real" tube preamp. Tube preamps usually run on high voltage (like 300V) and a starved plate design runs around 40V.
Click to expand...

Actually, it has a high plate voltage option that supplies "The equivalent of 300v"
 
I really appreciate your support guys, trying to steer me away from going down a rabbit hole that's really not going to be beneficial to me in the long run. I am hearing you loud and clear and will be taking the advice to heart.

I do want to say, that I'm not entirely sure I'm being heard correctly, because all the responses seem to be about me going down a road of buying tons of pre-amps in the hopes that using the right one will solve any issues I'm having in my recording process. I want to say this is NOT what I'm looking for. I am interested in buying one or two pre-amps in the next year or so, some to just try out some other tones, but mostly because I eventually want to upgrade to an Apogee Ensemble, and that only has 4 pre-amps built in so I will need those other pre-amps before I can make the move.

Others have made the point that obsessing over my gear is not going to solve any issues in my recording either, and I totally hear that as well. I definitely want to make focusing on the fundamentals of recording my priority over my gear. However, as recording is not my profession and I have a full time job and only so many friends I can convince to let me record them in my spare time, I only have so much opportunity to focus on those fundamentals in practice. The rest of my time, focusing on my gear or theory or techniques is all I can do. And if that's all I can do, I want to make sure I'm doing them correctly. That's all I was trying to get at by asking my original questions. I am, however, looking to get more serious about focusing on the fundamentals and see if I could make this my career, as my job is slowing down, I'm looking for a studio to intern at one day a week, so hopefully that will contribute to me being able to learn proper recording habits and thinking that will be more beneficial.

I hope that clears some stuff up. I really appreciate all the advice and mindsets that have been giving in this thread, and I will try to keep them in mind when staying up at 4am debating which $4k pre-amp I want to have in my rack some day ;)
 
Having read every post in this thread, I thought that your questions were answered from a number of angles. Just to recap the questions:

a) Is this a good idea. Are there some items that I should stick to my Focusrite pre's for?

I believe the answer was that Focusrite Pres are among the best you can get. The answer then was yes, and you could very likely use the Focusrite for everything.

b) Should I be running my kick and snare through the MPA or would overheads be a better idea?

This was a strange question. It was like, "my car isn't running smoothly so should I wear a blue shirt?" Overheads don't do a very good job of picking up the kick. I think overheads should be there anyway, to pick up the cymbals and snare. If the MPA colours the signal in a favourable manner then go ahead. But I believe the answers said that it was not really an issue. Mic choice and placement was the recommendation.

c) If this is all true, what are some good $40 or less tubes to put in my MPA to help make it all sound better given what I said I'm using it for.

All this may not be true so the conditional on this question made the point moot. Mic choice and placement was easier than replacing tubes.

Thats how I read the post. Maybe you could rephrase the questions if the answers didn't suit.
 
GuitarLegend said:
Having read every post in this thread, I thought that your questions were answered from a number of angles. Just to recap the questions:

a) Is this a good idea. Are there some items that I should stick to my Focusrite pre's for?

I believe the answer was that Focusrite Pres are among the best you can get. The answer then was yes, and you could very likely use the Focusrite for everything.

b) Should I be running my kick and snare through the MPA or would overheads be a better idea?

This was a strange question. It was like, "my car isn't running smoothly so should I wear a blue shirt?" Overheads don't do a very good job of picking up the kick. I think overheads should be there anyway, to pick up the cymbals and snare. If the MPA colours the signal in a favourable manner then go ahead. But I believe the answers said that it was not really an issue. Mic choice and placement was the recommendation.

c) If this is all true, what are some good $40 or less tubes to put in my MPA to help make it all sound better given what I said I'm using it for.

All this may not be true so the conditional on this question made the point moot. Mic choice and placement was easier than replacing tubes.

Thats how I read the post. Maybe you could rephrase the questions if the answers didn't suit.
Click to expand...

Those were good answers, but I think question 2 was misunderstood. The question was regarding the fact that my MPA is my "tube" source and is only two channels, so are kick and snare the best option for getting "tube saturation" on or would it be better use to use that saturation on the overheads (or not at all?). I see that the answer was that mic choice and placement are more important that worrying about this, and while I don't see how the two are mutually exclusive, I guess I'll try to focus my energy there and experiment with the question at hand when I have the opportunity to find out.

I think in retrospect I should have named this thread differently, because it was really asking "which one of my pre-amps suck less?" or "Should I ever be using my MPA over my focusrite pres and if so when" but when people saw "how do I best match pre to source" they got fire in their eyes and felt obligated to tell me that this was the wrong question to be asking. I will say though, I agree.

I guess the thing I got out of this thread other than "Jesus Christ stop worry about your pre-amps already and focus only on real recording techniques first" is that my focusrite pre's are a lot better than I thought and I should be using them more. And that even though clearly leaving the stock Chinese tubes in my MPA will make it sound worse than if I was to replace them, I should still not worry about it and focus on mic choice, placement, and other techniques first. Sorry if that sounds super sarcastic, but that is honestly what I have gathered from the replies. I really appreciate all your responses and know you are trying to put me on the good path and save me some trouble, so thanks very much!
 
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