Pre's...are they magic?

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MadMax

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I've been looking for a pristine vocal chain for a while, and finally decided on a Symetrix 528. From what I've been reading, it's a sleeper or a diamond in the rough. Maybe not world class ala Manley or Neve, but generally considered to be above most of the MF stuff like ART and Presonus.
I've been playing with it for a few days and have come to the conclusions that either;
1.) I'm deaf
2.) Preamps are highly overrated on these discussion groups
3.) The Symetrix 528 isn't enough of an improvement over my A&H Mixwiz or my ART TubePac. Do I need to jump up to the $$next$$ level to really hear a difference?
BTW, I tested using a SP C-1 mic.
 
You don't mention what you're monitoring through.
 
max. in my opinion very much its coming down to these days how good the engineer of a song is. a good highly experienced engineer will use a mix whiz
or a symmetrix and get good songs down.
frankly i think too many people new to recording focus too much on equipment and not enough on the engineering aspects. i'm still learning after many years.
in my opinion symmetrix and rane etc in that class are perfectly good for laying down tracks.
maybe you should rent several higher end pre's in the 1k to 2k level of cost
and see if they float your boat more.
 
MadMax said:
I've been looking for a pristine vocal chain for a while, and finally decided on a Symetrix 528. From what I've been reading, it's a sleeper or a diamond in the rough. Maybe not world class ala Manley or Neve, but generally considered to be above most of the MF stuff like ART and Presonus.
I've been playing with it for a few days and have come to the conclusions that either;
1.) I'm deaf
2.) Preamps are highly overrated on these discussion groups
3.) The Symetrix 528 isn't enough of an improvement over my A&H Mixwiz or my ART TubePac. Do I need to jump up to the $$next$$ level to really hear a difference?
BTW, I tested using a SP C-1 mic.
Click to expand...

Pre amps are sorta overrated to a point(it won't turn your 2 dollar mic to sound like a 1K mic) but if your fairly new to recording you aren't gonna hear a difference anyway
 
The tools only make it easier as you get better. It's kinda like having a great guitar with a shit amp... if you have a touch you'll be able to get some tone from it, if you don't have some touch, you'll get shit. I know I've made this analogy a bazillion times... but I'm not going to sound any different on a $199- Mexican Telecaster than I will on 1958 gold top Les Paul... I'm a shitty player and that's that.

Now, I've been a better player, but I was practicing all the time... and frankly, if I went back to practicing all the time I could be a way better player than I ever was before because of the ear training I have attained over the years... but it has been an "over the years" thing that was brought on by me playing my other instrument... "recording studio".

Make any sense?
 
So what I'm hearing is; I'm a hobbyist running a Delta 1010 on a 1.2G PC that only occasionally crashes. I'm using an ElCheapo SP C1 thru a decent budget pre, my LSR28P's are pro quality though, right? I try to record in the evenings when the kid's homework is done. Fortunately, I'm divorced so I don't have a wife to deal with. I've been a rock guitarist for 30+ years, I'm trying to record a country song for my daughter to sing in about 2 years. I've got plenty of time to tweak my recording skillz (that's hip right?) so it's a waste of time and money to get a Manley or G.M. or all that fancy high drool factor stuff.
WHat I'd like to see here is a list of the equipment that DETRACTS from quality for us hobbyists. It's a tough enough gig trying to make something sound good when the gear isn't sucking up the sound somewhere. But I'll bet I could make a kik drum sound bad with a distressor. ;)
 
MadMax said:
Fortunately, I'm divorced so I don't have a wife to deal with.
Click to expand...

Yes, be thankful for that at the very least! :D


MadMax said:
WHat I'd like to see here is a list of the equipment that DETRACTS from quality for us hobbyists. It's a tough enough gig trying to make something sound good when the gear isn't sucking up the sound somewhere.
Click to expand...

That's a tough one, and all you can really hope for (I think) are rules of thumb. It's a good idea to avoid Behringer, Rolls, or Nady, for example. But that's not to say that all of their stuff is bad by any stretch.

You're doing well by sticking with reliable, well-designed and manufactured brands like Symetrix, M-audio and Studio Projects. From there, all you can really hope for is to keep developing your ear to the point where you'll be able to listen and instinctively know if a piece of gear isn't doing it for you. And if for some reason you never develop that ear, then don't sweat it. :D Recording isn't necessarily for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with that. No one expects you to be Mutt Lange or Bruce Swedien. Have as much fun with it as you can.
 
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Generally the effects of a good/great preamp are only going to be heard on a good monitoring system. Also it can be hard to hear the effects of a preamp on only a single channel of audio... but when you've recorded 24 or more tracks thru good preamps the end product will sound AMAZINGLY better. Look at it as an 'additive' effect... everything is getting that extra 5% and when you add up 20 tracks it makes a difference.

I would put a good monitoring chain before a pristine preamp setup as far as sonic weight goes. In fact, your ADC converters are going to have more authority as far as sound goes than your preamps.

Nothing worse than cruddy converters if you are tracking to digital. They are by far the "ultimate bottleneck" in the digital world.
 
My take is that you should throw good money at making your mixing room acoustically balanced, a solid monitoring system with high head room, and a variety of good to great mics.

All the above are the mechanical aspects of your recording. Everything else is about electronics. While electronics are going to play a roll in overall sound, it will be NOWHERE are much as the big 3 listed above.

After that, I think your mixing console is the next biggest deal. How you sum all them tracks together, and how you are able to route audio to everywhere it needs to go is a big ol' deal! If you don't know why, then you aren't at the level where you would appreciate better preamps anyway. You have some VERY big considerations here. And if you want to talk about how to decide what is going to be best for you over the long run?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Oh boy!

After that, well, it is whatever you want it to be. :) Preamps, dynamic processors, etc....Whatever floats your boat, or serves the production approach you take to recording.

Don't sweat preamps too much. Even I get sucked into this silly battle of opinions about them, but in the end, I have done some VERY solid recordings that people thought had great sonic detail with "lesser" preamps. Some of my best work ever was done with almost exclusively ART and Mackie preamps. Nobody that has listened to this stuff could guess what few instruments in the mix were tracked with high dollar preamps at all! I mean, for the 10X price difference, you would have thought those few tracks would have jumped right out of the mix and blown you away with their obvious superior sonics right? Well, they didn't, and what was amazing was that throughout some big session I have done, where the budgets were there to use MORE high dollar pre's, we were finding that the high dollar pre's just didn't sound all that much better to justify the rental costs. Not by a long shot. In fact, we were finding often that the ART pre's were standing up quite well on most stuff compared to Neve, Focusrite, Telefunken, Demeter, Sytek, etc... In the end, we just stuck with the ART signal path and people have held these productions in very high praise.

I don't think preamps are going to make or break your production. Good solid mics and mic technique, good monitoring, and good environment to listen to it all in WILL!
 
Well, I CAN control the environment, kuz it's my house. In fact, the dining room is my control/mix room and the living room, complete with 20' ceilings is my live room. My Marshall cab is isolated in the storage room under the stairs, and the vocal booth is the master closet upstairs.
I do need to work on my control/mix room. This weekend, I'm building a new desk in the corner and I'm gonna hang some big, theater style curtains, floor to ceiling.
 
Hmmmmmmm...So, you are going to attenuate about 40% of the energy around 2KHz and above. I doubt that is going to do much to improve the listening room environment.

You should probably focus on a way to eliminate the first reflection, front wall (behind the monitors themselves) reflections, and possibly a little low midrange absorption. These three things are generally the biggest problems. Possibly some well placed bass traps too.

Curtains really aren't going to do much in the "right" ways.
 
Yeah, I knew that, I figure the biggest improvement I'm gonna make this weekend is reorienting the room on a diagonal. I have access to some soundproofing material that they use up at the Bayliner plant to soundproof engine compartments. It's about 2" thick grey foam with a layer of rubber in between that STOPS sound. I've got rolls of it 24" wide totaling about 40' long. Don't know how to build bass traps, but this stuff ought to be good for something.
 
max try this. face the back of your mix desk into a corner so you are looking into the corner from your mix position. then read up ethan winers bass traps excellent articles. it doesnt work all the time but together with some experimentation with acoustic tile etc might help cut down reflections.
 
The biggest factor, I believe, that gets looked over most often is the quality of the instrument, amplifiers ... the condition and tuning of the drums, etc.

Good-sounding instruments will trump even the worst gear. It's really hard to get a bad recording when the instrument for some reason just sounds great coming out of the monitors and records really well. And some of them just do that naturally (record well) -- and a lot of them don't.
 
chessrock said:
The biggest factor, I believe, that gets looked over most often is the quality of the instrument, amplifiers ... the condition and tuning of the drums, etc.

Good-sounding instruments will trump even the worst gear. It's really hard to get a bad recording when the instrument for some reason just sounds great coming out of the monitors and records really well. And some of them just do that naturally (record well) -- and a lot of them don't.
Click to expand...

I agree. I've got some old live board tapes from the '80's that sound great. But it was a great band that knew how to play together.
Thanks for the reality check.
 
In most cases, a home recordist would be well served to upgrade the instruments / amps / drums etc. that they are recording before something like preamps. Even then, I would reach for better mics before I upgraded my preamps.

I've got a group in my humble project studio right now, and the drummer is sounding better than most any I've heard on "tape" with a 4 mic setup. He knows how to hit 'em and has an explosive style that just kicks ass.

War
 
For good drum sounds, I think it's all in the heads and the tuning.

I could go through a shitload of music samples from bands I've recorded . . . exactly the same way in exactly the same room with the same mics, etc. , and you'll hear a big difference sometimes in the recording's quality and fidelity from one to the next.

The difference is in the heads and the tuning as well as the playing. It's in the amps and the strings . . . the setups . . . the pickups . . . it's all in the little stuff. Good musicians tend to be connoisseurs of their instruments. Gearheads like us who know how to get good sounds.

The bad ones say: "Make me sound good." The good ones say "Don't mess with my sound." :D
 
Welcome back sonusman. You were one of the originals...and one of the best. Folks, listen to this man. He has been there and done that--cheap gear, expensive gear, etc. I have heard sonusman's amazing AT 4033 + ART Tube MP + Behringer Composer Pro + Event 20/20 recordings as well as some of the stuff he's done on high-end gear. Ed can make ANYTHING sound good.
 
chessrock said:
The bad ones say: "Make me sound good." The good ones say "Don't mess with my sound." :D
Click to expand...

Chess, that's the most quotable quote I've read in months.

War
 
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