The truth about pres ??? Your comments please...

  • Thread starter Thread starter philboy
  • Start date Start date
You already have $1,200+ in budget preamps. Why not sell them and get a dual channel high-end preamp? Then you have eliminated one BIG question mark from your signal chain. You will never again have to ask "Is my preamp good enough?"

Also, with a high end preamp, I think your existing excellent mics (Rode NT2, AKG C451B, Sennheiser MD441, SM57) will all become instantly even better and you will have a very solid reference set for comparing all future mic purchases.
 
to those of you who think there isn't that much difference

do you think the same holds true using those same examples as bass DI's? Or is that an apples and oranges situation? I mean, if you think there isn't that great a difference between an RNP and a Grace 101 as mic pres, does it also hold true that there isn't that great a difference between them as bass DIs, or is the phenomenon specific to mic pres?
 
ozraves said:
Bad converters do negate a lot of differences in gear.
Click to expand...

Agreed 100%.

I believe converters and a good clock need to be puchased before any expensive pres.

This way you can REALLY hear th difference between the new Neve you bought, and the Bellari.

-Finster
 
The discussion of preamps, and differences...8).........

I think Chessrock said it best, Double blind testing.

Its amazing how our perceptions can be skewed, particularly when our wallet has been involved.

A couple of my thoughts.


1. If you can't pick it everytime in a blind listening test, keep your wallet closed...8)

2. When you can pick it in a blind listening test, decide if you should open your wallet....do you really need it.

3. If you havent sorted out the acoustics of your room , and dont yet have translatable mixes......do that prior to buying high end preamps.

4. Be very carefull of volume differences in a blind test situation, louder can often be percieved as better....

The preamps that come standard in things like the Yamaha AW4416, 01V96, VS2480 etc are fine for most peoples applications, and in a good room, using sorted out acoustics, and attention to detail, will provide great sounding results used in the right hands......I have heard some awesome recordings done on this type of equipment.

Its so important to have your environment right, otherwise it just lies to you...

we are all, always chasing improvement in our mixes.....and its always fun to get new shiny gear.

But, also here is a thought, say you made an album now, with a high end preamp. Album A.

Then you took the money that you would have spent on a high end preamp, and treated your room, sorted out your monitors, and maybe, even, hired an experienced engineer, to come to your studio, and help you with getting the best out of your room and your gear, helping you to tune drums, or mic postioning or mixing or whatever......Album B.


which album would sound better...A or B?


Try and use stuff in your studio if you can.....if you cant, search the net for examples of peoples recordings, done with the gear....thats a good acid test.


cheers

Wiz
 
Wiz said:
3. If you havent sorted out the acoustics of your room , and dont yet have translatable mixes......do that prior to buying high end preamps.

4. Be very carefull of volume differences in a blind test situation, louder can often be percieved as better....
Click to expand...


Extra rep point for that.
 
You're right. Wiz's entire post is dead on. And on a lot of levels.

I think he's been reading our posts, Kenny.


I'm actually going to add on to Wiz's illustration here, because I can speak at least somewhat from experience.

I am just now getting done recording a band's album that I've been working on for the past year with them. We originally laid the basic tracks down at a studio that had some pretty nice gear. I used API's on the kick and snare, True Precision 8 on the overheads, Telefunken on the bass, Brent Averil Neve's on all the guitars. I was running mostly Neuman tube microphones, and nice AKG small diaphragm condensers. Probably the cheapest mic I used was an MC-012 underneath the snare, which I brought along. Maybe the AKG 414s on the piano. The converters were Apogee. All channels.

On a few of the songs, the drummer wasn't satisfied with some of his fills, and he just didn't keep a very steady beat either. The drums were re-tracked at my studio, along with everything else for those songs. Now this was basically the ideal opportunity to directly test my setup against some really high-end stuff. I even have the orginal tracks from the nice studio to compare against tracks of the same songs recorded by the same people within the same month even. Only variable being my place and my stuff versus their place and their stuff.

When all was said and done, the drummer's performance was far better at my place, because he had had several weeks to listen to his initial takes ... and ultimately how to play them better when it came time to re-track. As for the guitars, it's amazing how much more time the band is willing to spend on dialing in tones and being perfectioninst about their sound when they know they're not on the clock for $80 + per hour.

Needless to say, the stuff we tracked here at my place just sounded better. Higher impact, higher fidelity, everything. A big part of it was the performance ... the rest of it may have been the attitude ... but the most telling thing is that at no point during the re-tracking or since have I said to myself : "Damn, I wish I had those nice mic pres from the other studio." What it really brought home, loud and clear, was the simple fact that the better-performed tracks that used more refined playing technique ... also provided the highest fidelity.

If you were to perform a double blind test, at equal volume, putting the two takes, side-by-side, and ask which ones used the higher end equipment? It would be unanimous. You'd all think the second take used the better mics and pres.
 
The biggest improvement in my recording chain has been room treatment. Oh, it was fun shopping for pres, mics and monitors. But as the chain got better it became painfully obvious how bad the room sounded.
Now we have a combination of Auralex and OC703 panels from Modular Acoustics. I'm finally starting to get recordings that I can feel proud of.
YMMV :)
 
Bass traps and foam might be your lowest cost investment and could change things dramatically as far as hearing differences in your preamps. $400 in wall treatment goes a long way in improving a room. Don't forget bass traps, critical in small spaces less than 1600 sq. ft.

If you cannot hear the difference after the above, change your convertors and then your monitors. Those Events have done a few albums thus convertors should be your next focus. You might look at the Lynx line of products or, if your flush with cash, Apogee. I noticed a lot of smearing when I was using M-Audio cards so this could be a possbility.

With the rest of the gear you have, much can be done.
 
Chessorck

a kindred spirit me thinks...*)


Performance is EVERYTHING.

Arrangement is EVERYTHING.



Its amazing, how easy it is to record and mix when the performers on and the song is good.....

The beauty of the home studio, is you arent under the pump, you dont have to pay 80 clams an hour...

the downside of the home studio is, i think under preparation of performances and songs.

It used to be that you would rehearse before going to the studio, now , not so much.

Double edged sword I guess....

Still, on the original topic, its amazing what a few bags of fibreglass can do for a room...8)......


Wiz
 
I recently got a pair of Earthworks TC30s and tested them out by playing a CD through my monitors and micing the monitors. After I got the placement right (or there about) I recorded it and was pretty floored at how close it sounded. I was using an Allen and Heath GL2400 for pres and a Motu 24io interface and there was only a very mild degradation in sound. And keep in mind that I'm going through the Motu twice, once on the way in and once on the way out. That's less than $150 per channel for both preamp and conversion. I probably could have avoided the degradation using better pres and better converters but that probably would have cost me close to $5000 a channel to avoid it all, or about $3500/chnl just to avoid most of it. That's a pretty good jump in price for little improvement.
 
I think by now we all should agree that performance first and instruments second are the most important factors of a good recording. I think somebody (perhaps Ed) let that little secret get out some time ago. :D

Another secret that somehow got leaked to the masses is that you must have a good room to both effectively record what is played and to hear what you record. :rolleyes:

But this thread is about preamps, dammit! :D Gear!
 
Wow. This is a really good thread.

Yeah, the most noticeable over-all improvements I've gotten were when I a) got a non-box shaped room to work in, b) treated that room, and c) improved the system clock.

Its amazing what a 57 sounds like on a good vocalist through a decent pre in a good room. Not "knock your socks off" amazing, but its just stunning the difference the whole chain makes. The same mic run into a tascam 428 in an untreated bedroom was unacceptable. Unfortunately, I don't have the 428 anymore to do any kind of comparison.

Take care,
Chris
 
Middleman said:
I noticed a lot of smearing when I was using M-Audio cards so this could be a possbility.
Click to expand...

Middleman,

Can you describe the smearing? Others have mentioned this (not necessarily as related to M-Audio) and I've always wondered about it.
 
Basically, to hear a noticable difference between preamps you need to jump up several classes. The pres you are using are roughly comparable, and mostly within the same approximate (budget) price range.

It sounds to me like you have champagne taste, but are trying to get by on a beer budget. I would suggest saving up for a really good preamp, because your ears seem to be telling you that's what you want.

Don't go less than approximately $1,000 per channel (list price) and I'm sure you will indeed be able to hear a difference. The difference between a cheapo preamp like the ones you are using and a high-end preamp are *not* subtle. It is something that is clearly audible, and a great preamp will make pretty much any mic sound way better. It will also make getting good sounds and good recordings a lot easier.
 
tkingen said:
Middleman,

Can you describe the smearing? Others have mentioned this (not necessarily as related to M-Audio) and I've always wondered about it.
Click to expand...

When you do a head to head comparison of a low end converter and a high end converter, the low end converter will sound like it has a hazy cloud over the sonic image, to use a visual term. It's kind of like putting the sound through a very cheap EQ; details are not as crisp sounding and there may even be a part of the frequency range that is either lacking or over-emphasized. It makes it very hard to create a translatable mix because you are not mixing against a flat palette.

Usually this is not an issue with the converter chips themselves but the surrounding implementation of the circuit. In fact, many of the tracks I recorded with my M-Audio card, 24/96, sounded much better when I played them back through higher end converters. This indicates that the AD was pretty good on the M-Audio but the DA or clock on the card was sub-par.
 
I have been this route myself. It started with a behringer mixer and a digi 001. Then it was a mackie vlz, then a ghost ,then a modified ghost. Now I have tens of thousands invested in hotrod boutique pre amps and more in mics etc, etc, etc etc and built a good sized studio in my garage. It's never enough. There is always a better sounding unit for any given application. You can have all the coolest equipment ever built and still it's not right.

Here's the thing that I would submit for your brain to wrap itself around.

Is any of this stuff going to make you play and sound better ?

Are you the musician you should be ?

Some of the best music of all time was recorded on crappy equipment. It still moves people to tears and inspires them to play and learn. No pre amp or set of monitors will do that for you.The majic is in the hands of the performer more so than the equipment he/she uses to record it. (not to say that good gear won't help) If you find yourself listening to music and trying to judge the quality of the recording or trying to figure out if it was recorded using a mackie pre or a great river etc etc you are missing the point of it all.

So maybe instead of spending $1500 on a pre amp only to discover that your converter sucks, your money would be better spent on seeking out the best teacher for your instrument that you can find. I promise you that in the long run you will be much more content with your decision.

I started this ramble talking about the equipment route I took. It has not made me a better drummer. It has not made me a famous engineer. It has emptied my pockets and all this stuff is expensive and sometimes frustrating to maintain. I have now gone back to the route of becoming a better musician. And honestly the recordings I did with the Mackie vlz sm 57s and digi 001 sound fine.

Good luck.
Eric
 
Good message.

There are a few core essentials that will appeal to the masses.

Melody and arrangement

Message and passion.

Rhythm and pulse.

These transcend gear.
 
Well, I'll chip in here with my experience. (And I'll just add my voice to those saying that song and arrangement and performance are always the main things.)

When I made the jump from low- and mid-level pres up to my first really nice one, yes I did notice that the sound was subtly richer, but one of the most important changes, funnily enough, was something I'd previously considered an incredibly boring aspect of sound transduction -- noise floor. With that nice pre my noise floor dropped away to nothing. The noise on my mid-level pres wasn't the CPU noise coming through the large condensors -- it was self noise from the units themselves! Another point -- the increased frequency range that any high quality unit can bring you. Those two changes did more to help me understand what a good pre is all about than all the discussions in all the forums I've ever read. We can talk subtleties of texture all night long, but for me it was just the quality results from using quality tools that sold me. Simple stuff, but what an amazing difference.

Two cents.

Cheers all.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top