What is meant by the phrase "Pre-Amp Stackability"

[Primal Yell]

Was inclined to think that "stackability" was a function of your "Mixing skills"....not the Pre-amp.

[jchas]

Any frequency peaks and valleys a device has will become more and more pronounced as you add or 'stack' more tracks using that device. A single track through a preamp may give you a nice, warm sound. A dozen tracks of that nice warm sound will give you a brown, smeared low end. The more transparent the device, the less the problem will be. Post EQ can tame the problem, but the best solution would be to use the proper device for the job at hand and not try to fight it later. If you only have 1 preamp available you might not have that luxury. Hopefully the 1 preamp you have doesn't impart a very distinct, over-the-top color to everything you run through it.

[Zooey]

There are lots of albums out there that were recorded using only the built-in preamps on a Neve or API or whathaveyou console for every track and every overdub. I understand the theory, though.

 

The most colored preamps I own are some racked PM1000 channels with transformer in and outputs. I think I could use just that for an entire project with careful gain staging, mic selection, and mic placement.

[Music Calgary]

I read somewhere that the Great River is basically a slightly modernized version of the Neve circuit which seeks to eliminate that "haze".

[Tacket]

This effect becomes very apparently when tracking and mixing on a desk such as the Mackie 8 bus series.

[jchas]

 

This effect becomes very apparently when tracking and mixing on a desk such as the Mackie 8 bus series.

 

 

I can't really argue that as I still use a 24*8. But over the years i've found it's possible to minimize it's effects.

1) Start with Zooeys recomendation of using the best gain-staging, mic selection, mic placement, and best suited preamp you have for the task at hand. Record that signal direct.

2) Avoid using pre's on the board by mixing through tape in's.

3) Proper use of step 1 minimizes the use of the mixers crappy EQ.

4) Outboard EQing of outboard FX through Auxes helps a lot.

5) Avoid using as many of the boards amps as possible (pre's, subs, etc.).

 

I've found that my GreatRiver tracks stack very well as do my Sytek tracks.

My Drawmer MX-60, if used strictly as a pre, doesn't stack well - but because it's a channel strip with a lot of on-board control (EQ, compressor, tube simulator), can.

I do run my keyboards through the mixers pre's simple because I have a lot of keyboards and the routing is easy.

But it's the combination of the different tones that makes them play well together.

[UstadKhanAli]

There are lots of albums out there that were recorded using only the built-in preamps on a Neve or API or whathaveyou console for every track and every overdub. I understand the theory, though.

 

Yeah, and that would stand a far better chance of sounding good than recording an album with solely Behringer preamps. Stackability indeed.

[CN Fletcher]

 

There are lots of albums out there that were recorded using only the built-in preamps on a Neve or API or whathaveyou console for every track and every overdub.

 

 

... but at the time, 16, maybe 24 tracks were all that were going to be recorded. I've seen projects come through the door where the track counts were well over 70!! [the highest I ever saw was 94... I thought the guy a complete fool... but loved taking the money to spend 3 days making the decisions he was afraid to make].

 

16-20 channels of "neve" are fine... 50-60 tracks and [at least in my world] you're gonna have a problem.

 

Peace.

[Phil O'Keefe]

... but at the time, 16, maybe 24 tracks were all that were going to be recorded. I've seen projects come through the door where the track counts were well over 70!!

 

I can't think of a song / project in my entire career where I've waxed more than 48 tracks, and it's usually under 32. I've mixed projects with more tracks than that, but usually I think if you can't get it done with 32, you're probably overdoing something...

 

YMMV.

 

Howyabeen Fletcher?

[UstadKhanAli]

I usually get it done in 24 or under, even with a lot of the usual "ear candy" that I love to do. On really big things, maybe 30. I'm not trying to be "old school" or "purist", either. I'm simply trying to make some music as musically and sensibly as possible.

 

Good to "see" you, Fletcher.

[CN Fletcher]

I wish I were you guys... I got a project in to mix last week that was sent over with 65 tracks [granted... 6 of them were of a guitar solo this genius wanted me to weed out and turn into an actual guitar solo... so I guess it was more like 59]... and the audio was... uhhhh, what's the word I'm looking for... yeah, that's it... horrible... but golly, it left the building violently over compressed sounding smaller than a mouse turd.

 

The client loved it!! [moron].

 

The most complex thing I've done as a producer had maybe 40 tracks... but that was on one piece of 2" 24 track tape so we did a LOT of pre-mixed "bounces" so it was like a pretty normal mix [except that what was once 12 tracks of drums came up as "Drums L" / "Drums R" during the final mix.

 

Even with 24 tracks you can get a pretty palpable "buildup" of the Neve 'haze'... or so I've found [YMMV].

 

[PS... never really left].

 

Peace.

[I was The Funk]

A lot of the stuff for my current project is running in the 40's in terms of track count. Most of the early stuff was done on a Presonus Firebox, so there is definitley getting to be a bunch of buildup. Fortunately, I just got an RNP from the good folks at Mercenary, and we will be redoing all the vocals and featured intsruments with that, and redoing drums at a real studio.

 

But a lot of the track count is due to the nature of a DAW. Some things are little effects here and there. A lot of other tracks are archived and muted. But it is a very dense and layered project, maybe too much so.

 

By the way, how much does the Meth Lab at Mercenary cost if you let us be your guinea pigs for some drum recording? I think the band might be down with that, and it could be a fun way to approach the drum recording.

[CN Fletcher]

 

By the way, how much does the Meth Lab at Mercenary cost if you let us be your guinea pigs for some drum recording? I think the band might be down with that, and it could be a fun way to approach the drum recording.

 

 

Check your Private Messages folder.

[fuzzball]

For clients I usualy end up with less than 24....usualy..not always.

 

As for my band I am usualy under 20.

[Primal Yell]

On a tangent, May I ask--How in the world do you get enough computer power to handle such large amounts of tracks? (like say...48 or more plus plugs??) There must be genius at work.

 

I'm left with an impression that colored Pre's are disfavored ??

 

I may be bringing an improper mindset into it caused by analog synthesizers--but heavily coloring a synth patch used to be required--so you tweaked it to your heart's content, funny,.....actually :idk:striving for the colors, and becoming obsessed with getting the colors. Same with guitar rigs. But not so much color in the context of recording?

[jchas]

 

I may be bringing an improper mindset into it caused by analog synthesizers--but heavily coloring a synth patch used to be required--so you tweaked it to your heart's content, funny,.....actually :idk:striving for the colors, and becoming obsessed with getting the colors. Same with guitar rigs. But not so much color in the context of recording?

 

2 different animals, horses of different colors, apples and oranges...

You may have spent hours for the perfect OW-bass from your Mini, or dialed in every pedal you own to make that guitar scream for attention - but record and layer a dozen or more tracks of that same sound and you're going to have sludge at mixdown. The best scenario would be to have a few flavors of pre's and even more flavors of mic's to mix-and-match while you track - always thinking ahead as to which combination will make the source at hand sit where you want it in the final mix. If you don't currently have the resources, the time, or the experience to think that far ahead - then do what the majority of others do - record it as close as you can to what you hear in your head and tweak it with EQ and compression after the fact. Typically you will end up shredding the original tracks apart at mix anyway as they never seem to sit quite as well as it did in your head.

[UstadKhanAli]

...and fast computers chockful of RAM. I'm left with an impression that colored Pre's are disfavored ??

 

We were just discussing how albums were regularly made with nothing but Neve or API mic preamps (and boards, obviously) in this very thread, which are arguably rather colored. But sure, there's a chance that if you were to use these same mic preamps for 70+ tracks, something might happen. I don't know. I'd go mad before doing a session with 70+ tracks. After about 30 tracks, I start frothing at the mouth and yanking someone's hair out...

 

If I were forced at gunpoint to run a session with 70+ tracks, I'd much rather use something like Neve or API preamps than Mackie or Behringer or ART. If you're gonna have a sonic thumbprint for that many tracks and it's gonna be colored, you may as well at least have a GOOD sonic thumbprint.

[Phil O'Keefe]

On a tangent, May I ask--How in the world do you get enough computer power to handle such large amounts of tracks? (like say...48 or more plus plugs??) There must be genius at work.

 

Speaking only for myself, I use a dual core Athlon 64 4200 with 4 GB of RAM. Relying solely on the CPU, I can get a ton of simultaneous plug-ins with it, but when you also take into account the HD 2 Accel cards I have installed, and the SSL Duende in the rack, there's even more horsepower on tap...

 

I'm left with an impression that colored Pre's are disfavored ??

 

I suppose it depends on who you ask.

 

Again, speaking only for myself, I tend to prefer colored sounding preamps, unless I am only going to have one type of preamp available, in which case, I actually frequently prefer going with something a bit more neutral.

 

However, IMO, any time you have an active electronic circuit, something's going to change, and absolute "neutrality" is a bit of a myth, although some preamps are definitely less colored sounding than others.

 

I may be bringing an improper mindset into it caused by analog synthesizers--but heavily coloring a synth patch used to be required--so you tweaked it to your heart's content, funny,.....actually :idk:striving for the colors, and becoming obsessed with getting the colors. Same with guitar rigs. But not so much color in the context of recording?

 

But would you use that same synth patch for every synth line on the song, for every musical part, from bass to leads to pads?

 

Again, it really depends. The original question pertained to preamp stacking - how the tonal characteristics imparted by one preamp tend to "build" when you stack, or record, tons of overdubs or tracks using just that one preamp brand / flavor / tonality. Old Neve stuff tends to have a rep for low-mid buildup when you stack a ton of tracks with them, but as has already been mentioned, there were a LOT of great records that were done (pre-DAW era) with nothing but a good 2" tape deck and the mixing console's onboard preamps; but as others also pointed out, 2" tape held a maximum of either 16 or 24 tracks (unless you have a Otari MX80 with a 32 track headstack), so the sheer number of maximum tracks you could "stack" back then was limited in a way that no longer applies when we consider the relatively unfettered track counts of modern DAW software...

 

Not all preamps stack the same way. My Vintech Dual 72 (a Neve 1272 clone) tends to build up some gunk if you do a large project with just that preamp, while the newer Neve 8801 tends to be less susceptible to that in my experience, as does the Great River NV stuff. The API 312, while still "colorful" IMO, has a different character to the sound - brighter, more open on the top and more aggressive in the mids. If I used just API stuff on a record, I'd watch for that, because it might get to be a bit too much... but again, if you were working back in the late 70s / early 80s, you very well could have been working (if you were lucky) on an API or Neve board with just those mic preamps at your disposal, and it didn't hurt the sound of those records.

 

Ideally, I like color, but I want variety so I can choose what shades to use to color various parts of the image with... Neve on the kick, API on the toms, RNP on the room mikes, etc. Imagine you bought a variety box of crayons, but when you opened the box, everything inside was red. You'd be a bit more limited than if they gave you a 16 or 64 color variety box of crayons to play with.

 

Guitars and synths are similar IMO. You can get some great sounds out of a Dave Smith Instruments Prophet '08, but you might also want to have a Motif sitting around for the different tonal options it provides. Doubling a guitar part that was played on a Les Paul through a Marshall JCM800 with that same rig and settings, and the sound will be different than if you used a Tele and a Twin for the doubling. Neither approach is "right or wrong", just different.

 

Of course, I'm a unwashed rock and jazz type of guy, and if I was doing classical, I'd probably want the most transparent, cleanest and quietest mic preamps I could get. It really comes down to your needs and preferences, and what you're after and how you like to work...

[Ethan Winer]

 

There are lots of albums out there that were recorded using only the built-in preamps on a Neve or API or whathaveyou console for every track and every overdub.

 

 

Exactly.

 

This is being discussed at Gearslutz too so I started a new thread there earlier today:

 

Stacking Theory

 

I'm glad to discuss the theory further there or here.

 

--Ethan

[UstadKhanAli]

Thanks for the link, Ethan.

 

Seeing as how those 1970s recordings sound pretty damn good and most of them used the same mic preamps/boards throughout, I'm not going to get too worked up over this. I'm not using a bunch of really crappy sounding mic preamps that might have a cumulatively crappy effect, so it's all good!!

 

BTW, I have three different kinds of mic preamps (Neve Portico, RNPs, Peavey VMP-2). Actually, four if you count the Mackie board, which I'll use if one of the other mic preamps goes down for the count while I'm doing drums. At any rate, that's enough variety, not that it really even concerns me.