How important are microphone preamps to a home studio?

  • Thread starter Thread starter BIGTYME
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You make sense Axis.

A lot of sense but does that actually transfer over to the final mix?
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This is so true of amp building. It's better to have more gain in the pre ....But their is a saturation point ......
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Yup, 60's era designs were frought with all sorts of trade-offs. If you look at most of them, they were only able to claim 20-20kHz response because the response was still within -3 dB at 20 kHz.
A modern solid state design will be within ± 0.2 dB all the way to 60 kHz.

Now, maybe you like the "sound" of certain designs. That is good, but that is all a matter of opinion. I like old fender tube amps. I am not disparaging old designs.
I am pointing out that even cheap modern amps have more accurate transmission and amplification of the signal. They preamp has very little "sound" of its own. that is different than adding an "effect" that you happen to like.
 
Fishmed_Returns said:
Most definitely, the mic pre is more important the mic, but that is not to say the mic is not important. I think with just about any mic, using the right positioning, you can get a very good recording using a “great mic pre”. If you flip the tables and use a crappy sounding mic pre, just about every mic you put on it is NOT going to give you that good of a recording. Again, a crappy mic pre may sound ok for a couple of tracks, but after 4 or so it will start to disintegrate the quality of your mix.
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The pre-amp for SOME mics is MORE important. The TLM103 is a great example. This mic gets a bad rep because it does not sound very great with the cheaper pre-amps but absolutely kills with some high end pres!

I tried it with my A&H board pres up to my Avalons and the difference was amazing. Same mic, same instrument, same placement. I just changed cables and set the same gain. People have to be careful with sweeping judgements and this topic has been done for so long and created more arguments than the cheap chinese mics threads. All I can say is I recorded for over 30 years on everything imaginable of which 90% I can't even remember. Now I have many racks of good to great pre-amps and when all is said and done, and you get used to great pre-amps for many years, go back to the cheap ones, plug in your mic and record a full song with all the experience you have gained moving up the pre-amp chain. The end result will be the glaring truth that great pre-amps make a very big difference when you finally have truly outgrown the cheapies.
Buying expensive pre-e right up front is a great idea if you are filthy rich but for the learning home-reccer, the great pre-amps will go unnoticed for quite some time. I think Ford Van does a great job with the equipment he uses on these recordings, but I doubt he would contridict the fact that if he were using much better pre-amps that he could come up with better sounding recordings. That just makes sense. All I read from him is that you would not be limited in your recordings by DECENT low cost pre-amps. There are some decent ones (DMP3) compared to some stuff by Behringer for example. If you buy the truely cheap crap (Alesis 3630 for example) as opposed to a FMR RNC for the same approximate $$$$, one can see that the better choice would be the RNC by far, or the DMP3 by far.

This post has become a novel by now and ED can add me to the list of novel written posts, but this topic just gets kind'a tiring. :D
 
MCI2424 said:
Now I have many racks of good to great pre-amps and when all is said and done, and you get used to great pre-amps for many years, go back to the cheap ones, plug in your mic and record a full song with all the experience you have gained moving up the pre-amp chain. The end result will be the glaring truth that great pre-amps make a very big difference when you finally have truly outgrown the cheapies.
Buying expensive pre-e right up front is a great idea if you are filthy rich but for the learning home-reccer, the great pre-amps will go unnoticed for quite some time.
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+1

This is pretty much where I was coming from. I had some descent mic pres at one time that I did not realize how good they really were. Since I used them for many years, I did not think there would have been that much of a difference when I downgraded to the Behringer. After using the Behinger for awhile and then comparing those mixes to my older ones, the difference was day and night. I could never get the recordings done on the Behringer to be anywhere close as those recorded on the better mic pres.

Here is my line of thinking: I have a very limited budget, so I figure I could afford more “Good Mics” than I can afford “Good Mic Pres”; therefore, my choice in mic pres is more important than the mic itself because I know I will have a broader range of mics to choose from.
 
Bad gear will not make a bad performance sound worse.

Good gear will never make a bad performance sound good.

Bad gear will never make a good performance sound bad.

Good gear, however, will make a good performance shine.

Of course there is a diiference in the sound quality of various preamps. While the difference between a $79 preamp from company A and a $79 preamp from company B may not even be worth discussing, there is a noticable difference between most $79 pres and most $400 pres.

Even among the cheap ones, anybody who cannot hear the difference between the Yamaha MG series pres, the Mackie VLZ series pres, and the Tascam DM series pres needs their ear wax cleaned out. Which one is better or worse in which way will be debated endlessly, but there IS a difference.

Even more, there is a difference in the sound of microphones and preamps used in different combinations. Differences in both impedance matching and voltage ranges can and often do cause differences in signal performance.

G.
 
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about as important as a 3 pack of condoms in a 3rd world brothel.............

no disrespects!!!!!

but i've recorded with a dynamic mic going str8 into my PC and got decent audio quality, but once i got my AKG perception 400 condenser mic and the presonus Eureka as a pre-amp and pre-recording compressor the quality changed so drastic, i was able to hear ants fu**ing to my tunes bro!!!
 
Behringer Pre

The idea was raised by a couple posters that Behringer pre’s aren’t usable without ruining the sound.

Curious, so I dug up an old B'er mixer out of the closet - a UB802, $39, 2 pre's in it - and recorded this Brazilian guitar duet going out through one channel of the mixer's 2 bus since the pre has no direct out. The pre sounds OK - maybe a little flabby in the lows and low mids compared to my better pre's but not too bad.
 
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Hey Tim...sounds good to me.:D

Nice and clean. That sounds to be a mixture of different flavours...;)
 
so you want a 1000$ pre and a 100$ condenser, and you think that that's going to sound better then a 1000$ mic and a 100$ pre?

white people are crazy.
 
Preamps are important, but there's a whole lot of other things in the chain that I'd worry about before the preamp.

The preamp and A/D convertor issue has been greatly exaggerated over the course of the past few years. Thanks to the internet, gear mythology is at an all time high.

Picking the right microphone for the particular job is much more important.
Having a "A" performance is much more important.
Having the right arrangement is much more important.

I've got both a really good pre and some average pre's, and I can tell you that I worry about a lot of OTHER things before my preamp comes into the equation.

As long as you've got a reasonably decent pre (low noise, + dynamic range), put the money in the mic cabinet.
Then, wait around for some guy to dump his super-duper preamp on the market that he though would make his recordings sound like Bob Rock's - you can pick up for chump change.
 
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