newb :( preamps?

  • Thread starter Thread starter scheherezade
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scheherezade

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so i buy this mic and i'm all excited until i realise i need to spend some more cash [which, as luck would have it, im rather short on] to buy a preamp or di box if i want to record at an okay quality. it's a shure sm58, which my mates told me was pretty good for the price, even though its not a condenser. i'm looking at a behringer mic200 tube preamp on ebay for $AU125 which would be a bit less than $US100. It seems a good deal to me but then, i don't know much about em :(

so i guess basically what i'm asking is, does anyone know anything about the pre? pros and cons etc. and value for money type ish. and if anyone has any suggestions for a better one feel free to inform me :D like i said, i'm low on funds so id prolly be looking at less than $AU150 but if theres one that's really really really amazingly awesome i can always save up. but not more than 250 i dont think. i'm not in a hurry or anything i'm mainly recording for personal use anyway.

cheers guys :)
 
But if you want not suck, dont get the art tube. Although some say it's pretty solid as a bass DI.
 
mattamatta said:
But if you want not suck, dont get the art tube.
Click to expand...


Okay, let me get this one strainght. If I want not suck ... don't get the art tube?

What if I want suck? No, wait a minute. I want not suck, right?

This is really confusing. Although I think I found a great band name in "Want Not Suck."
 
Don't buy anything behringer, most of it is crap and the resale is terrible.

I don't think you'll ever regret picking up a DMP3
 
Chess, sounds like you might be better suited by something with a "suck" knob so you can decide on a case by case basis whether the track should be suck or not suck. Maybe stick some working circuit guts in one of the funk logic panels hehe.

Haha, I think I'll build a pre someday with a functional "suck" knob, have it intentionally screw with the sound. Good times.
 
scheherezade said:
so i buy this mic and i'm all excited until i realise i need to spend some more cash [which, as luck would have it, im rather short on] to buy a preamp or di box if i want to record at an okay quality. it's a shure sm58, which my mates told me was pretty good for the price, even though its not a condenser. i'm looking at a behringer mic200 tube preamp on ebay for $AU125 which would be a bit less than $US100. It seems a good deal to me but then, i don't know much about em :(

so i guess basically what i'm asking is, does anyone know anything about the pre? pros and cons etc. and value for money type ish. and if anyone has any suggestions for a better one feel free to inform me :D like i said, i'm low on funds so id prolly be looking at less than $AU150 but if theres one that's really really really amazingly awesome i can always save up. but not more than 250 i dont think. i'm not in a hurry or anything i'm mainly recording for personal use anyway.

cheers guys :)
Click to expand...

I have heard some pretty good tracks done with the thing, both as a mic pre and bass DI. Of course, those tracks where done with some quality instruments, competent players, and some middle of the road mics. Can you try them out locally before you buy? You dont really need to know that much about preamps if you get an opportunity to listen to them in action - trust your ears, and not any internet gossip stating that ART or Behringer must suck just because its ARt and behringer...
 
mattamatta said:
Chess, sounds like you might be better suited by something with a "suck" knob so you can decide on a case by case basis whether the track should be suck or not suck. Maybe stick some working circuit guts in one of the funk logic panels hehe.

Haha, I think I'll build a pre someday with a functional "suck" knob, have it intentionally screw with the sound. Good times.
Click to expand...

It's pretty simple. (Yeah, right. :D)

First, take a pair of faders with stereo pan taper (i.e. from half-way on, it is 0 ohm). Shift them off by 90 degrees and lock them to the same shaft. At the bottom of the knob, mark 'normal'. In the middle, mark 'suck'. At the top, mark 'really suck'.

Next, what you do is set up a basic vocoder. You take a sine wave and modulate it with the audio from the singer. You then devise a box (any laptop with a proper sound card should do fine, with proper modifications) that does an FFT to detect the singer's pitch and outputs a voltage that varies accordingly. You use this to drive an exponential VCO that provides the sine wave. Now you get something resembling that 'vocoded' sound at the straight up 'suck' position. (Be sure to apply the appropriate log function to the FFT output so you don't get double exponential. That would ruin the fun of the 'really suck' position....)

So tweak the position of the parts of the pots in such a way that the first half of the throw (from left to center) fades smoothly between the raw sound and the vocoded sound. Once you get half-way through the sweep of the knob, the second half of its sweep changes the gain of an amplifier from unity up to 2x. That amplifier lies between the output of the FFT-based frequency detector box and the VCO (which -must- be exponential). Couple that by adding a variable amount of opposite polarity voltage to forcibly keep A440 at A440, or thereabouts.

For those of you who understand what I just said, you should be laughing your @$$ off. Basically (assuming I explained it right), you end up with tuning between notes stretching the farther you adjust the knob from 'suck' to 'really suck', with the most extreme position resulting in an octave jump in the singer's note generating a two octave jump in the output.... And everything generally sounding like crap, but that should be obvious.

Anybody want to build one? :D
 
I'd recommend the M-Audio DMP3. You can pick it up now for 160 US on EBay or Music123 and it's a solid piece of gear for the price.
 
I've been using a VTB-1 for over a year now, and am still pleased with what I hear out of it. I have laid down scratch tracks using a SM58 through it, and I'd even go as far to say that you could get some usable real tracks with this combo. I tend to not get to into the tube feature, maybe only cranking it to the 9 o' clock position for most vocal stuff. It's a really clean, low-noise, great gain, budget pre-amp.

Warren
 
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