Mackie or Focusrite ???

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Morten

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I have a Mackie 1202 vlz pro and a Focusrite Tone Factory. Which preamp is the best for recording vocal ? I think the Tone Factory is a littel to bright !!!
 
Morten said:
I have a Mackie 1202 vlz pro and a Focusrite Tone Factory. Which preamp is the best for recording vocal ? I think the Tone Factory is a littel to bright !!!
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then go with the mackie... use your own ears as your guide. you know what sounds right and what doesn't... trust yourself!

mackie makes a pretty dern decent pre-amp... i have the bigger brother mackie (32x8) and the pre's on that are about as sweet as you can get (without selling your kidneys, taking out 7 or 8 additional mortgages on the house and winning power-ball) on a mixer.

of course this is just my most humble opinion
 
while you prefer the sound of the Mackie now, i think the Tone Factory has more potential...the Mackie is a nice preamp, but its kinda vanilla....i think you may need to experiment more with all the parameters on the TF....the Mackie is very straightforward and easy to set, but the TF can give a wide range of tones from clean to colored and better EQ and even compression....work with it and see what you can come up with.....
 
Re: Re: Mackie or Focusrite ???

minusone said:


then go with the mackie... use your own ears as your guide. you know what sounds right and what doesn't... trust yourself!

mackie makes a pretty dern decent pre-amp... i have the bigger brother mackie (32x8) and the pre's on that are about as sweet as you can get (without selling your kidneys, taking out 7 or 8 additional mortgages on the house and winning power-ball) on a mixer.

of course this is just my most humble opinion
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This is not from personal experience, but I was told the pres in most of the larger mackie boards haven't gone vlz, and are not as good as the vlz pres....anyone know?
 
Although I'm not a big fan of the cheaper focusrite stuff (not that I own the expensive though) I would guess that the tonefactoy itself is more pricy that the whole mackie unit. I would defenitly go with the focusrite.
 
The preamp that is best for recording vocals is the one that sounds best on the particular vocalist you are recording at the time. It will also depend on what mic you are using. Different mic/preamp combos will give you different results on different voices.
 
well tdurex, who can argue with that. You hit the nail on the bottom.
 
Thanks...

Thanks a lot.

Home Recording is a fuc... good place !!!

Morten
 
Mackie is "too vanilla?"
Never heard it refered to anywhere near that. I would call a Neve 1272 vanilla, but a Mackie? I want the Mackie YOU have... damn...
 
Re: Re: Re: Mackie or Focusrite ???

Executivos said:


This is not from personal experience, but I was told the pres in most of the larger mackie boards haven't gone vlz, and are not as good as the vlz pres....anyone know?
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Yeah, you are right, they are NOT VLZ on the 8-bus... but I did have an SR-series, which *did* have VLZ... and I must say, to my ears, that the pre's on the 8-bus are more "present" than those of the VLZ... and since I use tube pre's for vocals (most of the time) most of my noise comes from the tubes... yet still the "noise" is completely inaudible to me when I just run my at3035 straight into a channel on my 8-bus... the vlz doesn't make a whole lot of difference in my situation... but again... what suites my studio won't in someone else's
 
You know, eventually some wise mass marketing music manufacturer will realize that a Neve style preamp wouldnt cost them too much to mass produce, and someone will finally get 4 channels of properly built 1073 style preamps out there for about $1200, and single channels with good power supply for $400 or so. They would sell like crack. Make a small fortune, and then release a good complimentary EQ, 1073 style, for $400, and its on.
How much longer, Papa smurf?

Hopefully, the new generation of stuff (ie RNMP, RNC, C3, TLM-103,) cheaper, but quality stuff, will change the way manufacturers think. Pretty soon, there will be no reason to buy a Behringer board, and they will have to either make it right, or forget about it. I think the next 2 years will be quite interesting.
 
tubedude said:


Hopefully, the new generation of stuff (ie RNMP, RNC, C3, TLM-103,) cheaper, but quality stuff, will change the way manufacturers think. Pretty soon, there will be no reason to buy a Behringer board, and they will have to either make it right, or forget about it. I think the next 2 years will be quite interesting.
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here here tubedude... i think you are absolutely right the next 2-years will be very interesting indeed... and i think we have much thanks to give to companies like mackie and alesis for kicking the industry in the ass (or balls?)

Mass produced doesn't have to mean sh*t. Neumann is finally seeing this, focusrite is too (although the platnum series i think is a weak start... they can do better)... now just get Neve to fall in line... and hell.... sure would love to get an SSL for under $5000 LOL!!!
 
tube,

maybe we have to define "vanilla"....my thoughts on the Mackie is that it is a great ,clean pre that wont put a whole lot of color on the sound....hence vanilla.....

now something like the Tone Factory is much more colorful, which may be more desired in some cases, in some cases not....such a colorful pre is more Rocky Road or Buttered Pecan, not vanilla.....

now, what flavor would you call Mackie?....
 
What flavor is your mixer and why?

Sure am glad you define defined "Vanilla" I think everyone should define their sound by a flavor of ice cream. What is yours and why?
 
Vanilla fudge

Mackie 24/8 = Vanilla fudge. Mostly plain with an occassional bit of richness but never quite enough of the rich s*&t.
 
Re: Vanilla fudge

Jeroleen said:
Mackie 24/8 = Vanilla fudge. Mostly plain with an occassional bit of richness but never quite enough of the rich s*&t.
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heh... yeah... but i like the fact that the mackie pre's don't really color the sound at all (which I suppose is vanilla)... if I want coloration... that why they make mic-pre's

there are moments of richness (fudge) especially when running something in from a di

but, in my definition of a "good" on-board pre is flatness (vanilla), no coloration no nothing but as much accuracy as i can get... which i think the mackie 8-bus series does a damn fine job.
 
no no no! The Mackies are cleaner, and more like a wire with gain... not Great River clean and big, but clean. Vanilla is a flavor, and the only 3 things I've ever heard that actually sounded vanilla, and you gotta hear it to understand me, cause they really do sound thick and vanilla-ish, creamy in a way, is the Neve stuff, the Focusrite Red compressor and API preamps. The Api less so than the 1st two, the Focusrite probably the most creamy vanilla of all 3. If mackie was actually a flavor, I would say water, cause its pretty much flavorless. You have GOT to hear that compressor cranked up real nice. Creamy vanilla, you'll understand entirely. The bad thing is, I find alot of these nice colors disapear in standard 16 bit dithered recording, and I cant pick them out at all. Its like it takes it all away somehow. You can hear it plain as day in the control room live, but after that, its like "where'd it go?" Sucks.
 
tube i see we agree on what Mackie pres sound like...only down here we call it "plain vanilla"....you call it "water"....but we are describing the same sound....straight in, straight out.....very similar to my Delta DMP2, but the Delta has a tad more headroom....very vanilla.....:D
 
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