This discussion intrigues me. It always has. I have tons of preamps (I'm a cheap gear whore)--but not a single one cost me over $300 per channel (and most were way less!). And my go-to workhorse pre's are in a 25-year-old 32-channel board that cost me $500 used! That's less than $16 a channel! Only once in all my years of acquiring shabby-chic gear have I ever said, "Wow! That preamp sounds better!" And I may have just gotten over a cold that day--because now, I don't think I could tell it from any of my others.
Anyway, here's the deal: I'm about to take possession of a new mic and preamp. (The mic is a vintage RCA 77D, probably worth $4000. The pre is a UA 6176, worth about $2500). And no, I'm not buying them. I'm taking over the voice-over work of a local company, and as part of the deal, they're giving me the equipment in their vocal booth because a) they don't know what it's worth, and b) they really don't care.
Never mind the mic--it's a specialized vocal mic--and I don't sing. But the arrival of that preamp presents an opportunity. I'd like to create a listening test. I've seen (and heard) all the tests of a simple one track recording with different preamps. Folks can never tell which preamp was $50 and which was $2500. But then the purists always come back with the same response: "The difference is in the stacking! You stack a dozen or even 24 tracks and then the difference will be obvious!" But I've never seen anyone stack a couple dozen tracks in a preamp shootout. So I will.
If you guys know my studio, you know it's a custom-designed and built, well treated space. I've got tons of instruments, and tons of mics. The limitation is this: everything has to be single tracked: I'm only getting one channel of the UA, so I can't exactly record a drum kit. Beyond that, the sky's the limit. Acoustic guitar, electric guitar (various guitars and amps), congas, bongos, uke, mandolin, harmonica, bass. And all kinds of microphones--ribbons, condensers, dynamics, tubes--from no-names to RE20s and C414s and lots in between.
Oh yeah--I almost forgot. I have a very nice isolated XLR splitter. So there won't even be any variance in the performance. Every track will be played once. Then the same exact performance will go to both preamps with all other variables being exactly the same.
So my challenge to you is this: Help me design the A/B test. How many tracks do you want to hear "stacked?" What instruments? Raw as possible? Or processed with the usual suspects--EQ, comp, reverb?
Throw out some suggestions and I'll track a tune. Ribbon on high gain lead; tube LDC on mandolin; SDC on acoustic; dynamic on bass amp...whatever! Help me come up with a complex, real-world recording scenario, and I'll record it and present it as captured by the killer preamp and a cheapie. We should have fun observing the differences (or not observing the differences, as the case may be).
And as far as the pre's go--you know what the high end one will be. But I've got so many cheapies (150 channels!), maybe you wanna let me know what you'd like to hear in the shootout. Here are the low-brow choices:
Behringer "live" preamps (from a couple different mixers)
mid-90's
Tascam M-2600 mixer
early 2000's TASCAM 1804s
ART MPA Gold
TNC Neve 73-ish clones
mid 80's
Yamaha
mid 80's Sunn
Behringer ADA-8000
M-Audio Octanes (think DMP3)
Symetrix 202
A lot of these are fairly obscure, so I would think the test might be most valuable with either the Octane (because the DMP3 is so touted as a great low-budget pre) or the Behringer ADA-8000 (because Behringer is so very despised--but this piece is in tons of studios anyway!). But let me know what you think.
I promise to be fair. I've got no dog in this fight. On the one hand, I'd love for that UA preamp to blow my mind--cuz hey, I'm getting it free and that would make it one killer deal! On the other hand, I'd love for the cheapies to do just as well--cuz hey, I've got tons of that crap, and it would mean I've done okay!
So help me design the test--give me your thoughts on instruments and tracks, and which cheap-ass pre I should use. Tell me what you wanna hear, and I'll write and record a tune. Then we'll see what's what.