Tube Mic vs. Tube Amp

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whyseye

whyseye

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I touched on this briefly in another thread, but here's the question -
to obtain the beautiful tube mic sound that I'm so lusting after, is it equally important (or not important) to use a tube preamp as well as tube mic?
What happens with, say, tube mic and standard preamp?
Or, non-tube LDC with tube amp?
I think all of my money will be going down the tubes.... :rolleyes:
 
Others much more suited to do so will no doubt reply, but what I've heard often is - there are good tube and good solid state preamps. Some solid state preamps are "thick" and almost "tubey," while some tube preamps have a "sheen" and sound "hi-fi." In short, I don't think it's so easy to just say, I'll get a tube preamp and get THIS kind of sound. There are too many different varieties.

FWIW....
 
Just out of curiosity, what is that "beautiful tube mic sound" you're after? If you've heard it before, where? There's a pretty big difference between "tewb" sound and the sound of hi-voltage vacuum tube circuitry. In fact some of the most expensive tube equipment (I can only speak from a audiophile perspective on this, haven't had a chance to hear a Manley or similar yet) sounds very clean and devoid of any "tube characteristics."

I'm just worrying you're lusting after something that isn't there.....that "warmth" that everyone talks so fondly of. As far as I'm concerned, "warmth" has a lot more to do with the room, the source and the micing technique than whether there's something glowing in your preamp or not.
 
IMHO solid state preamps are more useful than tube. It is nice to have some tube pre's for coloration, but there's no way I'd *ONLY* want tube preamps.

Tube mics are great for vocals, but I don't use them on much else besides that.

Gimme an AKG 414 and an MD421 thru some UA 2108's for guitar anyday. :D
 
I wish that I had a better vocabulary to explain - my only frame of reference at this point is optics. There are camera lenses that may be equally sharp - same basic optical formula - but one has a fullness, a richness, a sense of dimension, yes, a warmth, that is lacking in the other lens. Sort of like the difference between film and digital - digital may have all the resolution of film, but to me it's cold and flat. I understand that every part of the signal chain is important, but obviously the better the raw input, the better potential for quality output.
I do tend to prefer the luxuriousness and sense of substance of vintage sound, optics, design, etc, so maybe it's just a knee-jerk response that I have not yet attained the knowledge to properly explore.
How does "warmth" translate with sound?
How does one acquire the vocabulary for these abstract concepts, and the tools for implementing them? (Apart from this resource, which is aces!)
 
As long as the gear is good:

Tube mic + tube pre = good
Tube mic + SS pre = good
FET mic + tube pre = good
 
whyseye said:
I touched on this briefly in another thread, but here's the question -
to obtain the beautiful tube mic sound that I'm so lusting after, is it equally important (or not important) to use a tube preamp as well as tube mic?
What happens with, say, tube mic and standard preamp?
Or, non-tube LDC with tube amp?
I think all of my money will be going down the tubes.... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I'd say tube mic.
 
tube mic is the better buy...

...one thing that might influence your decision is the cost factor...a nice sounding tube mic (great for vocals) might cost only $200-300...whereas a truly nice sounding tube pre would cost 3-4 times that amount...I recommend (from my own personal taste) an MXL V69M ($218. on ebay)
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=15198&item=3776768329&rd=1
and a clean pre like the Rane MS1B single channel or M-Audio DMP3 dual channel ($149. from many venders on the web)...under $400. for a clean, classic "Tube-y" sound...and the solid-state pre is more versatile than a tube pre...great stuff for the home-studio starter...
 
whyseye said:
How does "warmth" translate with sound?
Click to expand...

When it's good, the low-budget 'tewb' sound is like using a soft-focus filter. It's low-order harmonic distortion that sounds nice.

When it's bad, it's like eating french fries and wiping your fingers on the front of your lens.
 
How do the sky's-the-limit-budget tubes' sound differ from that of the low-budget's?
My guess is the rich softness that you get from, say, Zeiss optics nicely filtered vs. the soft focus of a really cheap lens?
Thank you for speaking my language! And for being willing to translate to a newbie who is trying to use the vocabulary of photography and acting to express myself in this new arena.
I really want to come from an understanding of the fundamentals, but like most things I've taught myself, I always feel a bit as though I've come in in the middle. Like missing the week of school when you learned the sevens & eights in your timestables, and you're always double-checking yourself!
 
Well the analogy isn't too apt. As a photographer I want the sharpest, highest contrast lenses available, and I will change films for different 'sounds'.

There are two theories of preamps: one is that a pre should provide clean gain with no coloration, the other is that pres should come in different flavors for more creative options.

Compared with mics, which differ drastically in sound, preamps tend to be a lot more similar. I think at the budget to midrange level, most people are just trying to get better quality preamps, and if there are different flavors, it's probably because of design limitations.
 
One factor is what are you more likely to have multiples of in your setup.

If at this point you pretty much are going to have multiple mics and one preamp then having it be a tube preamp means you allways have a tube coloration, which might not be what you want all the time. If you have a tube mic among several then you have the choice whether to have a tube kind of sound or not.
 
Thanks guys - it's starting to make more sense now. (the film stock analogy was another one I was going to use, but didn't want to get too far off-topic).
Innovations - that seems logical to me; thanks for that take.
 
I do notice the differences between different cheap tube preamps and the clean sounding pre's in my DAW. How to describe them is hard to do.

I also have a cheap Berry 2 channel tube EQ thing that has 2 tubes and dials for amount of tube. It is subtle at first, then you hear that it's a kind of sizzle and it adds harmonics and I'm not sure where I'd use it, but it's nice to have the option, but I wouldn't spend a lot for it and I wouldn't focus on it much, it's just another effect I might use somewhere someday.
 
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