preamp question

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davecg321

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Hi there

My interface is a Presonus Firestudio Project. I am looking to buy a seperate Mic Pre for improving my recordings. Is it worth buying something like the ART TPS II? or are the mic pre's in the presonus just as good?

If I do upgrade I will need a device with 2 channels as I will be making stereo recordings. I did orignally want to get the ART mpa but this has just falle out of my price range due to christams haha


any advice would be greatly appreciated

- dave
 
According to this
Presonus Firestudio Project

The AI has decent pre amps with adequate gain. What mics are you using? Transformerless
capacitor mics (which is the vast majority of modern ones) are unaffected by loading so fancy impedance switching pre amps are of little use there. Even with dynamics/ribbons, the effect of loading is said to be subtle at best!

The only reasons for buying a specialist pre amp that I can see are...
1) To get a bit of "colour" into the sound. Valve distortion or "iron" or both.

2) A very high gain, very low noise pre amp for ribbons (say) at distance from quiet instruments.

Otherwise I would say stick with the FSP and add "warmf" if you want it with software (or look into re-amping!).

Dave.
 
My usual advice (that not everyone agrees with) is that money spent on microphones, acoustic treatment and monitors almost always makes a far more noticeable improvement to your quality than a separate pre amp.

As Dave says, at the high end of the market, studios use specific pre amps to add specific "colour" to a mic--but they're also using $2000 pre amps on $3000 mics.
 
davecg321 said:
Hi there

My interface is a Presonus Firestudio Project. I am looking to buy a seperate Mic Pre for improving my recordings. Is it worth buying something like the ART TPS II? or are the mic pre's in the presonus just as good?

If I do upgrade I will need a device with 2 channels as I will be making stereo recordings. I did orignally want to get the ART mpa but this has just falle out of my price range due to christams haha


any advice would be greatly appreciated

- dave
Click to expand...

I have a TPSII, DPSII and Dual MP. IMO none of them are any better sounding than the interfaces I have used. I only had them to make use of the line inputs on my early interfaces. Yes, you can get a bit of color from them, but nothing I would write home about.

Wanna buy one? :)
 
davecg321 said:
I am looking to buy a seperate Mic Pre for improving my recordings.
Click to expand...

This highlights the problem with audio magazines and a lot of audio forum advice. Replacing one perfectly good preamp with another preamp is just a waste of money. As others told you, microphones and room acoustics affect the quality of your productions far more than what preamp you have. Preamps are very low tech! Even budget microphones are mostly fine these days, compared to the room.

--Ethan
 
Yup, I also have a TPSII. It's adequate but nothing special.
I would also agree that your room is more important than your ai and pre's.
 
Presonus Pre's are the best bang for the buck there is. I bought a Digimax D8 because I didn't like the pre's in my MOTU for drums. It may seem like a downgrade, but sometimes less is more. Just my ears speaking.
 
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