Please suggest an 8 Preamp Audio Interface for Drums - Good Quality - 2024

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I have never had a good sounding room for drums. Ones that sounded great for vocals and other acoustic sounds worked perfectly but never drums. The ones I have worked in that sounded great to the mics were very strange when you clapped your hands!
 
I agree with the thrust of the argument that most AI pre amps are going to be clean and transparent simply because anything else is "subjective" If an AI mnfctr made a pre with permanent "colour" (AKA "distortion") they are limiting their market. Not going to buy that to record string quartets are you! Remember, once you have distorted something there is (usually) no going back.

BTW, I know it is FAR too late to change it but, the term "saturation" means something quite different* from what peeps imagine! A transistor/op amp/transformer/valve that is saturated is turned on so hard it has latched up and no longer passes a signal. Like "perfection" there are no degrees of saturation. Once the fekker is hard on it is fekkin ON!

So, go clean and mess it up ITB!

*Another example is "decimated"...does NOT mean total carnage.

Dave.
 
"Deep Purple's Machine Head was recorded in the hallways of the Grand Hotel in Switzerland. They had planned to record at the casino, but as the song says, "some stupid with a flare gun burned the place to the ground"."

I love stories like that.
 
The BBC Elton John piano was in what was really a corridor - with people walking through it! I expected a proper studio and it was all gear being pulled out of cardboard boxes.
 
rob aylestone said:
The BBC Elton John piano was in what was really a corridor - with people walking through it! I expected a proper studio and it was all gear being pulled out of cardboard boxes.
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Well out of “Cardboard Boxes’ is relative in the BBC’s case - If I remember correctly the engineers used Helpinstill pickups on the Piano.
 
They only had volume limited headphones. Another 'unofficial' box of old ones was pulled out. The mixer came from stores, still in the original packing. Mics were a strange collection too - D222, 451 and a few Shures. Nothing at all special. Piano was covered up, so a mystery as to the pickup.
 
"Can anyone suggest something that's really going to sound great?" Yes: all the pre-amps you listed. It's the room, and the monitoring. SOS magazine famously did a blind mic pre-amp shoot-out years ago, with well-known (and expensive) mic-pre's losing out to a . . . ART pre-amp, the Pro MP II, which is a two channel pre costing around 400 bucks. I know you're talking about a converter with mic pre's, like the Focusrite 18i20 (I own two of those, and all our drums are recorded on one of them), but still, and obviously, the name on the front of the device can influence one's perceptions. I use an ASP 880, eight channels plus inserts, reliable indeed for around $1400.00, at my main studio. If someone blind-tested the Focusrite and the ASP 880, I'll bet I'd be hard-pressed to hear a difference, and what kind of difference would I hear? In the SOS test mentioned above, a few test participants were shocked at how "bad" the expensive kit sounded.
 
TimOD said:
"Can anyone suggest something that's really going to sound great?" Yes: all the pre-amps you listed. It's the room, and the monitoring. SOS magazine famously did a blind mic pre-amp shoot-out years ago, with well-known (and expensive) mic-pre's losing out to a . . . ART pre-amp, the Pro MP II, which is a two channel pre costing around 400 bucks. I know you're talking about a converter with mic pre's, like the Focusrite 18i20 (I own two of those, and all our drums are recorded on one of them), but still, and obviously, the name on the front of the device can influence one's perceptions. I use an ASP 880, eight channels plus inserts, reliable indeed for around $1400.00, at my main studio. If someone blind-tested the Focusrite and the ASP 880, I'll bet I'd be hard-pressed to hear a difference, and what kind of difference would I hear? In the SOS test mentioned above, a few test participants were shocked at how "bad" the expensive kit sounded.
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Google "Do expensive pre amps make a difference? sound on sound Oct 2012" for that article.

Long before it appeared I had long been mystified and sceptical of the flowery language used by some people about pre amps. This is why...

The vast majority of pre amps in things like budget mixers and AI consist of two discrete low noise transistors at the front end of an op amp. I am not privy to the schematics of the very expensive esoteric pres but I suspect they use a variation of that circuit (or use top grade transformers*) Now it is a basic property of such circuits that they have a flat frequency response, quite easy to get -3dB points at 20Hz and the HF end will sail off into the Medium wave RF region unless steps are taken to curb it! The distortion from the very basic early circuits was a bit ***t but still around 0.01% and modern stuff is way better. Thus, what could possibly make a sonic difference? (answers on a post.....)
Simple answer. Naff All! The differences people report are all in their heads and those that are not happy with that statement must come up with some hard data to back it up.

N very B...In that article they are at great pains to point out that none of the pre amps were operated anywhere their maximum input level so there was no "mojo" or other artifact produced.

*Ha! Ha! Say the tweaks. "That's what it is. The transformers" Well no, mainly because of that last statement but also because pre with inout traffs tend to be the expensive ones and they use expensive transformers that DO NOT distort at modest levels. Ask Jensen, Sowter et al!

Dave.
 
One of the main things to look for in buying a pre-amp, or any kit, is, "Is it going to last?" One aspect of good gear is that it (should) at least far outlast something that is far cheaper, but this not always the case, is it?
 
TimOD said:
One of the main things to look for in buying a pre-amp, or any kit, is, "Is it going to last?" One aspect of good gear is that it (should) at least far outlast something that is far cheaper, but this not always the case, is it?
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A very good point in this world which is drowning in electronic waste...FAR too little is recycled. The other factor is "repairability". This is a play of many parts. First off, do the manufacturers have a good repair service and global network? How long will spares be made available?
This is a very competitive market now that HR is so big and so mfcts try to entice you with some special circuitry and "sonic mojo". That could mean a custom IC or transformer. Will they be available in ten years time? We have seen a similar situation with synths where a vital, many legged in house chip is no more.

Dave.
 
Yeah, I bought a modded Berhringer ADA 8000, from Revive audio. The first thing I noticed about the unit is it got very hot--the faceplate by the on/off switch was quite hot to the touch after about an hour's use, definitely hotter than the stock ADA 8000. I thought, "how long will this thing carry on, getting hot like that?" The answer was about 5 years of it being turned on every day. I believe the capacitors on the outputs are bad. The thing's outputs started wheezing and popping and crackling, first one, then all of them. The inputs still work fine. I'm going to take it apart eventually to see if I can spot the bad caps and maybe even replace them myself. But that probably won't work out, anf then what? Like you said, it's more electronic waste. I've got half a dozen old stereos and preamps-what do I do with them? As you said, far too little is recycled, and I don't see that getting any better.
 
Tim, the early 8000s were notorious for power supply problems. I have never had one and I don't know if was an underrated transformer or inadequate heat sinking of the 78 regulators? Whichever, any capacitor failures are going to be a consequence of the overheating not the cause. (they are in a 50Hz circuit so Danny's "ESR" factor does not apply.) The later 8200 uses an SMPSU I understand? (Oooer!)

In another, more gentlemanly era a company such as that would make the "new improved supply" readily available as a service replacement!

I have always wanted to have a crack at fixing* an ADA8K! Are you UK based?

*N VERY EFFIN' B! I am NOT opening the floodgates to all you buggers with bllxed kit! This would be a VERY one FkingOFF!!

Dave.
 
DM60 said:
I've had luck on Tascam US-16x08. But I am on a Windows OS.
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I've have had one for years, and I love it. It's also Mac compatible.
If you are going into a DAW, the TASCAM interface IMHO sucks. You would think they would have done a better job! I just bypass the TASCAM interface altogether. I use ASIO4ALL. Latency isn't an issue when you bypass their interface. Buffer size is programmable, sampling rate is programmable IF you use the interface. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that the default is 44k.
The preamps are clean, clear and transparent.
If you're NOT going into a DAW then you can use it in "Mic Preamp) mode. In that mode, Mic 1 in maps to Line Out 1, and so on. Each channel has it's own input gain control. Master Line Out 1/2, and a headphone jack (both with individual volume controls). Input monitoring is only by way of a "clipping" LED. But overall, there is plenty of gain, good S/N ratio, and the Line Outs are +4dBu and -10dbV selectable (in pairs).
It's a good DI and also retains its value (price for used ~ price new).
Simple, easy, sonically very good.
 
There were a few issues with a couple of versions of the Tascam driver, but the last one has been rock solid. I tried ASIO4ALL but it wasn't nearly as good. I like having the option of adding compressions on incoming tracks without using plugins. It's come in handy a few times.
 
Old Music Guy said:
I've have had one for years, and I love it. It's also Mac compatible.
If you are going into a DAW, the TASCAM interface IMHO sucks. You would think they would have done a better job! I just bypass the TASCAM interface altogether. I use ASIO4ALL. Latency isn't an issue when you bypass their interface. Buffer size is programmable, sampling rate is programmable IF you use the interface. I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that the default is 44k.
The preamps are clean, clear and transparent.
If you're NOT going into a DAW then you can use it in "Mic Preamp) mode. In that mode, Mic 1 in maps to Line Out 1, and so on. Each channel has it's own input gain control. Master Line Out 1/2, and a headphone jack (both with individual volume controls). Input monitoring is only by way of a "clipping" LED. But overall, there is plenty of gain, good S/N ratio, and the Line Outs are +4dBu and -10dbV selectable (in pairs).
It's a good DI and also retains its value (price for used ~ price new).
Simple, easy, sonically very good.
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I have no idea about the interface. I just use it to set the recording rate and bit and latency. Everything else is through the DAW.
 
DM60 said:
I have no idea about the interface. I just use it to set the recording rate and bit and latency. Everything else is through the DAW.
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I just found the TASCAM interface clunky and added some latency. That's why I bypassed it. I have compressor plugins, and channel strips, and reverbs and modelings up the ying/yang. I didn't need another set in front of my DAW.
Just my preference. YMMV.
 
I've had a Tascam for years and never knew it had effects? It just appears as an interface in windows. I never knew!
 
Rob, I think you have the US-1800, which doesn't have the DSP chip, but the 16x08 has compression and EQ in the control software. It's channel assignable. You can pair channels and control incoming signals, much like a mixer. It's a bit crude, but it's there. You can set and save scenes, and use the unit as a mixer when not connected to a computer.

16x08 control.webp
 
TalismanRich said:
It's a bit crude, but it's there. You can set and save scenes, and use the unit as a mixer when not connected to a computer.
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One of the things to remember is that every time this launches you will need to "LOAD" a scene. It is not "sticky". It took me forever to figure that out.
Also, in my experience, the driver loads from the "Start" menu. So, if it starts, and you cancel it without loading a scene, it will cause a world of hurt.
What I did is use the most generic version "16 X 16" or whatever it is now. Load it, and forget it. That's one of the reasons I hated it. It sits right in the front end.
It's also necessary to make sure the sample rate and buffer size it consistent throughout the signal chain or the latency is unbearable.
 
What version are you using? Early on it was two separate pieces, but with v4, it's all combined into one file and loads at bootup like any driver.
 
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