What's more important...mic or preamp?

  • Thread starter Thread starter blue4u
  • Start date Start date

What's more important...mic or preamp?

  • The microphone

    Votes: 99 51.6%

  • The preamp

    Votes: 24 12.5%

  • Both are equally important to the signal chain

    Votes: 69 35.9%
  • Total voters
    192
dgatwood said:
I'll take my best cheap pre and you find me a Telefunken 251. We'll do a vocal shootout with your expensive pre and my cheap-ass Nady dynamic drum mic and we'll see which one sounds better. :)
Click to expand...

As the Fonz would say: "Exactamundo!"
 
JTC111 said:
In my own case, I went mics, crappy room treatment, preamps, proper room treatment because I was stupid and uninformed. Early on, I wasted a chunk of change on cheap foam that gave me minimal improvement. Dumbass!:o
Click to expand...

A bit OT but...

Define "cheap foam" and please name names! Also, what do you have now which is "proper room treatment"? I am one who has suffered a poorly tuned room and am currently in the process of learning the hard way! When I'm ready to buck up I'd like to learn from yours (and others) mistakes if I may :D
 
Micter said:
It's a cheap mic when compared to most "great" mics
Click to expand...

Thanks for the clarification. I think some people may have thought that by "cheap" I meant "bad". Not at all! Bono tracks (allegedly) with an SM57. That mic can be had for less than 100 dollars as most of you know! People say that an SM57 when used for lead vocals requires a high quality preamp to boost the signal in a clean way. Otherwise, that "mid bump" only gets exaggerated and/or becomes cloudy. From that light, the preamp is clearly the winner.

All said, answer C might be most accurate but I still give the preamp a slight edge over the mic in importance.

I really like the "lens" analogy though :) Good discussion all. Thanks for your contributions....
 
blue4u said:
A bit OT but...

Define "cheap foam" and please name names! Also, what do you have now which is "proper room treatment"? I am one who has suffered a poorly tuned room and am currently in the process of learning the hard way! When I'm ready to buck up I'd like to learn from yours (and others) mistakes if I may :D
Click to expand...

Eh, I had a room full of "Foam by Mail" crap that I got off of Ebay. Now I have some traps from GIK Acoustics and it's a HUGE difference.
 
the correct answer is "the microphone."

you're welcome.
 
The very best pre i have right now in a "GT Brick" witch according to most accounts of those that have lust-worthy pre is "just this side of crap" In the last year I have added 26 mics to my closet (I'm looking into a 12 step program) and I have been tracking better recordings by leaps and bounds. I find it difficult to believe that a great pre would make as dramatic a difference and be as versatile as my mic collection.
Then again I don't have a great pre so I really don't know what I am missing.

BTW I have currently stopped buying mics and am saving up for a great pre, I mean which is better/best is irrelevant when we want it all. Great mics, great pre's it's all good.

Also a great dynamic will be much cheaper than a mediocre LDC. It's just cheaper to make.
 
Which came first? The chicken or the egg??


It's all semantics guys.


The correct answer is YES!




Given that a decent preamp is about the cost of a mediocre mic, I'd say there's no excuse for not having a decent preamp. There IS an excuse for not having a $12,000 mic though.



My personal philosophy follows the creative path when weighing importance.



First and foremost, a great player.


Next up, a great instrument. (If you have both of these, it's hard to screw up no matter what you're using.)


After that, a great mic. "Great" has nothing to do with price. It has everything to do about correct "match" for the source. A "great" mic might only cost $29.95. We just had a run on those. I'd say I hated that mic, except it happens to sound awesome on snare of all places...... Who woulda known.


Next preamp.



After that decent interconnects.



After that converters or recording medium.





In that order of importance for me.

I think there's a WHOLE lot of confusion going on in this thread equating "great" or "good" to price paid. It does not always follow. Not even close in this day and age.



Cheers,

bp
 
Rust E-Z said:
The very best pre i have right now in a "GT Brick" witch according to most accounts of those that have lust-worthy pre is "just this side of crap" In the last year I have added 26 mics to my closet (I'm looking into a 12 step program) and I have been tracking better recordings by leaps and bounds. I find it difficult to believe that a great pre would make as dramatic a difference and be as versatile as my mic collection.
Then again I don't have a great pre so I really don't know what I am missing.

BTW I have currently stopped buying mics and am saving up for a great pre, I mean which is better/best is irrelevant when we want it all. Great mics, great pre's it's all good.

Also a great dynamic will be much cheaper than a mediocre LDC. It's just cheaper to make.
Click to expand...
The brick is OK. I have one and it is an awesome bass DI. If you are getting good results with the brick trust me you'll get even better results with a high end mic pre. I recently got an A Designs Pacifica and it's no contest. The Pacifica is better at everything than the brick and brings out the best in my mic locker.
 
mrface2112 said:
This is easy. It's the preamp. A great preamp can make even a marginal mic sound decent.........but a cheap preamp will make a telefunken 251 sound like an mxl990.
Click to expand...

Not true at all!


I now have 4 "U47" style mics (with a few more to follow soon) and a couple of "M47" copies, plus an Ela M 250 clone and a C12 clone. Any one of them will completely lay waste to an MXL 990, even on a cheap preamp. On a good preamp they shine even more, while a mic like the 990 still sounds like poo. There is no question to me that the mic is far more important than the preamp.
 
Yeah - Both are important

but personally I noticed a greater improvement when I upgraded to a Universal Audio pre. But of course, I already had decent mics and I haven't tried a 990/991 through the UA yet to see if it is any good that way. Perhaps this afternoon I will give 'er a go. ($.02 deposited here)

Dave's Awesome Blog
 
To say that both are important is, I think, skirting the issue: it's a motherhood answer which is so obviously true that it doesn't shed much light on the question and doesn't help someone trying to decide where to make an investment.

In trying to answer this, we need to consider what is encompassed in the range between "cheap" and "expensive" in mikes and pre-amps, and also what we would exclude from that range. For example, would we consider the pre-amp in an on-board soundcard (e.g. soundblaster) and a plastic karaoke mike? Both are cheap, both sound horrible, and neither will produce creditable results if coupled with something high-end.

However, it seems that people are not factoring this low-end extreme into the discussion, with their references to, for example, SM57s. An SM57 is a budget mike; reliable, reasonable quality and versatile. So is, say, an AKG 770. Do you get 10 times the quality for a mike that's 10 times the price? Similarly with pre-amps. I don't expect a lot from the pre-amps in budget mixers (e.g. Behringer, Alto, Yamaha, Mackie and so on). I expect them to be better in interfaces such as Firepods etc. But not as good as in the dedicated units.

If we equate "cheap" with "bad" and "expensive" with "good" (not always valid), and measure somehow the quality difference between them, the element that has the greatest difference is the one to imvest in first. In other words, if there is a greater difference in quality between bad and good pre-amps than there is between bad and good mikes, then a pre-amp is the item to invest in to get greatest benefit. Conversely, if there is a greater quality range between bad and good mikes than there is between bad and good pre-amps, then a good mike is a more worthwhile investment.

It is my suspicion that the last is true (though I have no proof of this); that the difference between cheap and more expensive mikes is more pronounced than the difference between the various contemporary choices of pre-amps, and therefore I would go for a mike before a pre-amp.
 
gecko zzed said:
If we equate "cheap" with "bad" and "expensive" with "good" (not always valid), and measure somehow the quality difference between them, the element that has the greatest difference is the one to imvest in first. In other words, if there is a greater difference in quality between bad and good pre-amps than there is between bad and good mikes, then a pre-amp is the item to invest in to get greatest benefit. Conversely, if there is a greater quality range between bad and good mikes than there is between bad and good pre-amps, then a good mike is a more worthwhile investment.

It is my suspicion that the last is true (though I have no proof of this); that the difference between cheap and more expensive mikes is more pronounced than the difference between the various contemporary choices of pre-amps, and therefore I would go for a mike before a pre-amp.
Click to expand...

I would say that there's just as much difference between the bottom and the top. The difference is how much you have to spend before they become usable and how quickly the issue of diminishing marginal returns starts to reduce the impact of throwing more money at the problem. IMHO, if you have to choose where to spend money, spend it on mics because the return on your investment is better (at least within the price range of products that you're likely to see in home recording studios).

Also, I tend to agree with the folks who say that a good preamp should get out of the way. Generally speaking, unless I'm going for a particular effect, it should reproduce the input signal faithfully at a higher gain level and nothing more. Thus, while having more than one model of pre isn't a bad thing for variety, the differences are generally going to be subtle; if not, one of them is likely to be crap.

A good microphone is more subtle. Microphones have response curves that are tailored to a particular purpose. That means that you really do need a range of them to suit various sources, and as a result, throwing more money at your mic locker is going to make your recording setup significantly more versatile, while adding more pres is just going to make it very subtly different (unless you need more pres for recording a drum kit or whatever, in which case having more will make you slightly more versatile, but only in a very limited way).
 
dgatwood said:
A good microphone is more subtle. Microphones have response curves that are tailored to a particular purpose. That means that you really do need a range of them to suit various sources, and as a result, throwing more money at your mic locker is going to make your recording setup significantly more versatile, while adding more pres is just going to make it very subtly different (unless you need more pres for recording a drum kit or whatever, in which case having more will make you slightly more versatile, but only in a very limited way).
Click to expand...

True enough, when it comes to quantity of purchases more mics will be more useful than more pres...........But you STILL need at least ONE very good pre in my opinion.
 
JTC111 said:
I think this is a pretty simple thing to figure out. It's obviously the mic since that's what the sound hits first.
Click to expand...

This is like saying the most important part of your digestive system is the esophagus because that's the first thing the food hits. The stomach, small intestines, colon and rectum are much less important. Actually, they are all equally important. Screw up one, and you are screwed. The audio chain is the same.

Perhaps a better question would be where is it more important to spend your money, mics or pres? Then I might agree that you probably are going to need to spend more on mics.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top