Is it plausible to have a mic pre that is more inherently noisy, but still sounds better?

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Mic preamp quality seems to have two components, noise floor, and character. For those that have tried a lot of different pre's, is it possible to have a preamp that is more inherently noisy, and yet have it sound better in recording than say another pre that has a lower noise floor but less character?
 
No
preamps should have gain and no noise. Period.

character is distortion, nice distortion, maybe, but treatment of the signal nevertheless.

noise, however is for me, always negative. It is destructive. You could add it to simulate gear that did it by accident, an£ you can add it in a synth to dirty up a tone, but if the noise is well, hiss …….. how can that ever be an improvement.

my life’s quest has been reducing noise. Adding it might keep some people bizarrely happy, not me.
 
I agree with Farview.
I also agree with Rob.
I'm so agreeable these days !
 
I have an ART preamp. It has about 12 different settings, meant for different instruments or voices. I just mix and match. For example, the bass guitar setting is good on vocals, the keyboard setting is good for percussion etc.
I notice that a couple of the settings can be quite hissy depending on how much juice I need fed to the mic I'm using {usually, it only happens with the EM700 which is a small diaphragm condenser}. Most of them are noiseless, some of them are so sensitive, you almost dare not breathe in quiet moments !
 
My flippant answer was kind of a joke, but the question is a little too broad. Since there is no one singular sound that will be "better" in a recording, there can be a situation where the the thing that works best according to your taste in your mix might have a higher noise floor than something else that doesn't sit as well.

Just about everything in recording is a compromise. Everything colors the sound in some way. If the goal was always to have completely accurate capture of sound, all anyone would ever use are earthworks mics into some completely transparent preamp and eq and compression would be unnecessary.

Everything we do to shape the sounds to make things sound better in the mix are technically distorting the original sound. So every time you do anything, it is a compromise between the intended effect and unintended consequences.

"Better" is a matter of taste, so it isn't objectively quantifiable.
 
Tell me which one costs the most and I'll pick out the best one every time. There is no substitute for $$$$$$! Even if it's a piece of junk that's been sitting for 50 years, if you paid more for it because thats the current market price and it's something that someone famous once used, it's better.

There is no confirmation bias involved, either.

I want a preamp to be a neutral and linear as possible. If I want to color the sound, I have other tools to do that. As for a "better sounding" preamp having more noise, I would suggest that the person designing it did a lousy job if there is significant level. Preamps today should have imperceptible noise levels. Numbers in the -120+dB range are almost typical now.
 
From what I've read, I understand that valve mics deliver a desirable sound quality, but are more prone to noise than the transistor equivalent.
This may also transfer to pre-amps. It is not the noise that makes them good, but a desirable pre-amp may bring a higher level of noise.
 
Raymond has a point. Valves (tubes) struggle with noise performance, so a simple valve design is inherently noisy, more complex ones less so. History holds up the view that valves have a particular sound that is perceived as nicer. Note, not better.

valves cost more, so the product has to offer better value for the money. So the valve containing products are often higher quality items offering bette construction, more facilities, and solid design. However, to my mind, these extra facilities are really not crucial to the function of a preamp, as in, creating gain with as low noise as possible. Things like impedance adjustment. It produces a tonal shift that is different applied to different source mics. When behringer tried to introduce a dirt cheap valve preamp it sort of became a bit of a pointless produce. A basic, no frills preamp that really seems to offer nothing. It has a worse performance than some of their own products or circuits in popular mixers, the valve itself is not the vital bit, it’s the other bits!
 
Just because it has tubes doesn't mean it has to be noisy. Take the ART TPS II preamp. They rate it at -129dB A wtd EIN. The Avalon 737 is listed at -116dB unweighted EIN. Those are prefectly fine noise levels, generally on par with solid state preamps. One is a $250 preamp, the other is a $2400 preamp.

I still say proper design and implementation can provide good performance. Bad design can provide crappy performance regardless of whether it uses tubes or solid state parts.
 
A few factors missing in the analysis such as gain or impedance. Gain vs signal to noise is seldom linear and some pretty clean circuits can turn into hiss monsters when pushed to the limits. In the generic way this was asked, I don't have anything other than theory to throw at this question but can think of a few ways to reap some noise.
 
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