MOTU 896HD Pre's - 600 dollar range pre upgrade worth it?

[thispleasesme]

Hey everyone. I'm currently running all my audio through my MOTU 896HD's Pre's straight into my G4. I've got a couple of decent enough mic's that seem to satisfy my needs (Groove Tubes GT55, Oktava Mk012s, Shure Beta Mics, etc.) but I'm looking for a way to upgrade my signal chain for the least amount of money, specifically on vocals and other acoustic recordings i.e. drums, ac. guitar.

I really haven't heard anything about my 896's Pre's except that they are decent and quite transparent. What I'm looking to do is sweeten up the whole signal chain. I thought about upgrading and getting another LD Condenser such as the Rode NTK, but then it occured to me that I can't use that mic on everything. Basically, I want to try and sweeten up all my mics, so of course the obvious thing to upgrade first is my preamp.

My price range tops out at just about 600 Dollars USD. As far as rackmount dedicated pre's go, I'm looking at the M-audio Octane which is 595 bucks.

Another route I've looked into is the Soundcraft M8 mixer. Supposedly those have some real nice pre's on them.

So my question is, within the pricerange I just mentioned, is it even worth it to upgrade from my 896HD's pre's to something like the two I mentioned? If so, are those decent choices? Which would you go with?

If not, what, in your opinion, is the cheapest pre that would give me atleast 6 channels, that would be worth the upgrade from my current integrated pre's.

Thanks so much everyone!

 

[chessrock]

Expand your budget just a hair and pick up a Sytek.

Use those for your more critical tracks, and use the MOTU's for everything else untill you can afford something better.

 

[Todzilla]

$600 Preamps

If your $600 limit is hard, try the FMR Audio Really Nice Preamp. It's supposed to be pretty great, in the mold of the Really Nice Compressor.

If that's too much, Studio Electronics has a single channel for <$200 which is supposed to be pretty good too.

 

[noiseportrait]

You can get some nice pres for 600 bucks. Unfortunately, you won't find six channels of nice pres for 600 bucks. The soundcraft mixer probably won't be very much of an upgrade. The m-audio octane would probably be a noticable upgrade, but I'd rather spend my money somewhere else. What makes you feel the need to upgrade all of your channels at once? Why not just get two really nice channels of something like the the fmr rnp and use those channels for your critical tracks? Then you can save up and get another flavor of pre later.