Some Low End Pre's compared Presonus, Soundcraft, MOTU, Berry

  • Thread starter Thread starter johnsuitcase
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johnsuitcase

johnsuitcase

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I just did a quick shootout of the "pres" I had on hand today. I don't have a Mackie, or an Audio buddy, or anything "high end", but I think you can hear the differences of quality. Each of these has its own flavor, and I can see uses for any of them. I was a little surpised at some of the gain differences. Basically, I used a tone generator for input, then adjusted the level coming in to -10db, using the Pre's gain. On the Presonus, I had the gain all the way up, and started to add Drive in order to get the level up. On the Behringer, I had to adjust the input almost all the way up, but then when I flipped to Phantom power for the mic, it had a lot more gain, so I had to roll it back down a bit. So keep in mind that the Behringer phantom power creates a LOT more gain, for some reason. The MOTU was at about 75%, the Soundcraft right around 55%, so lots more gain available on the Soundcraft.

Cheap Pre Shootout

In my opinion, I think the MOTU and Soundcraft (Spirit Folio F1 that I got yesterday for $150) sound the best, with the Presonus having the most colored sound, and the Behringer being very plain, but usable. I use the Berry when I need more than 8 inputs, so it usually ends up with rough guitar or whatever.

Having said that, I would say if you're looking for good quality pre's at the low end of the scale, Soundcraft is a good way to go.

Of course, this is just one application, with one microphone. I'll be keeping them all for now, and seeing which ones I use the most.

Oh, and I blew up my Art Tube MP, plugged the presonus power supply in and poof! I never used it anyway, but I was hoping to see how it stacked up!
 
I think you'd find the mackie or audio buddy "high end" pre's you're refering to sound no better than most of the stuff you tested. It would be interesting to hear a mackie pre compared to a behringer since behringer is known to take a liking the mackie stuff. If you get a chance lets hear a shootout among the really cheapies and the mackie maudio stuff.
 
guitarboi89 said:
thats really useful...actuall evidence is much better than peoples opinions

would you know it the soundcraft spirit folio notepad would have the same mic pres? :)
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I'm not positive, but this one has the "Ultramic" logo on it, so anything with that should be the same or better.

I was just running my iTunes through the soundcraft (out of the MOTU 828 outs), and I have to say that the board seems to impart a very analogue, sort of smoothness to the sound. The EQ is really nice sounding as well. I'd say try the Folio out, and if you don't care for it, send it back!
 
jonnyc said:
I think you'd find the mackie or audio buddy "high end" pre's you're refering to sound no better than most of the stuff you tested. It would be interesting to hear a mackie pre compared to a behringer since behringer is known to take a liking the mackie stuff. If you get a chance lets hear a shootout among the really cheapies and the mackie maudio stuff.
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I think you're probably right. Most of the people I've talked to say the "old" Mackie is a bit harsher on the high end, though some people feel it has more clarity. Supposedly the Onyx is very close to the Soundcraft in character.

I have an Alesis Multimix 12R coming in a few days, I'll shoot that out with the Soundcraft, too. It's supposed to have great specs, but Alesis is like Mackie, in that the high end can be a little hyped (or so I'm told!)
 
I think a guitar or singing would be more useful... and notice how much the mic position interferes. with the behringer mic pre you first think "oh my god it sounds like crap" but it turns out you don't speak directly into the mic in the beginning. :)
 
I'm not sure which Presonus you used, but you'll get a much better sound out of the TubePRE if you split the gain between the drive and gain controls. Going all gain and then adding drive will produce a lot more hiss than splitting the gain and drive fairly equally. I suspect the same would hold true of a BlueTube, but I haven't tried it myself.
 
Yeah, the mic position affects it quite a bit, of course. I will say that looking at the waveforms, the Soundcraft and the MOTU had the widest variation, if you know what I mean.

I have two Presonus Blue Tubes, one is the older "blueface" stereo one with the LED meters, and the other is the newer "DP" one with the silver face and the VU meters. I haven't used the newer one much yet (I won it at TapeOpCon!), but the blue one does work best with the gain and drive knobs set sort of in the middle. Of course, by "best" I mean it has a bit of tube drive, not too much, but enough to give the mic some edge.

The Secret Life of Painters and Snow Song tracks on my site both were tracked with the B1 through the Blue-faced BlueTube pre:

Suitcase Recordings Demo Reel

When the Alesis shows up I'll do another comparison, I'll try guitar next time around...
 
Personally, I thought the first two samples sounded best. The behringer pres sample seemed kind of flat and muffled, and the MOTU did too, to a lesser degree.
 
regebro said:
I think a guitar or singing would be more useful... and notice how much the mic position interferes. with the behringer mic pre you first think "oh my god it sounds like crap" but it turns out you don't speak directly into the mic in the beginning. :)
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i agree with regebro.....i could notice a difference between some but when all i hear is NPR type talking.....theres nothing distinct about it
 
amra said:
Personally, I thought the first two samples sounded best. The behringer pres sample seemed kind of flat and muffled, and the MOTU did too, to a lesser degree.
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Yup. No surprize there ... the Behringer sounded like ass.
 
Right, but most of the muffling on the behringer is mic position, you need to switch back and forth between the 123 parts of the pres. The difference is much smaller.
 
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