When does the mic pre make enough of a difference?

[D Charles]

Well, it's weird, but seems like cheap pre's on just one part can sometimes work well, but not vocals and especially more than anything; background vocals. Once I got an Avalon, I realized I could never part with it because a stack of backup vox through it are so much easier to mix than I'm used to. I'd even put the lead vox through a lesser pre if I could have the good one for backups because of the stacking affect.

 

With say three parts singing the same lyrics through a Mackie or ART or whatever, the consonants and sss'es start sounding like distracting dogsh*t. Good pre's overcome this shortcoming.

 

I kinda understand the 'flavors' deal although I haven't tried a bunch of em, but you need at least an RNP to stack like parts IMO.

 

I've got a best bud that's doing a shoot out with that Millinia with the tube or SS paths channel strip, a GML and a Gordon. I'm anxious to hear some results, but he's just sent me solo bits. I'm like, put three backup vox behind that vocal/guitar bit!

 

That's how you tell what works most of the time no matter what. You gotta stack stuff and see if everything has it's own space , or if parts are fighting each other.

 

Now the average Joe might not have a concept of what we go through to mix parts, but that's what the good stuff does; it makes it easier to mix well. And I don't care if all you listen to are MP3's, if a recording starts out sounding good, it'll sound way better than the crap recording by the time it gets down to MP3, ear pod territory.

[UstadKhanAli]

 

I kinda understand the 'flavors' deal although I haven't tried a bunch of em, but you need at least an RNP to stack like parts IMO.

 

 

Same here...although I don't think it's absolutely necessary. Obviously, people made beautiful sounding recordings using only the mic preamps that were in the console. I happen to be able to mix different "flavors" because I have three different kinds of mic preamps, and do so, but I could just as easily record something really great with just the RNPs or Neves or the Peavey VMP-2 solely (if I had enough of one of those models to be able to track *everything*, obviously).

[jasps]

The pres in most decent audio interfaces kick the ass of what a lot of your favorite recordings were made on. I don't know if could sign off on / completely agree with that... Discrete and tube 1073's, V72's, API's, U/A, Tridents, Soundcrafts... vs opamp preamps? While I agree that most "bundled" (IOW, included with modestly priced boards and audio interfaces) preamps today are generally better than what was available on budget products in the 70's / 80's, most of the major label stuff from the 60's - 80's used what I consider to be sonically superior preamps, even if the majority of those records were all recorded with primarily just a single preamp type - the board preamps.

 

Nitpicking here: API's are opamp based. Input transformer - 2520 - output transformer. Maybe you meant to say IC based preamps? Even then, a lot of tridents and soundcrafts use IC's in their preamp circuitry.

[kylen]

And also, since I brought up signal chains, I also noticed a HUUUUUGE difference when I upgraded from Digi001 A/D converters to Apogee A/D converters. And so did my band. These differences were not subtle. And they're even less subtle when you stack the tracks. Things are not only clearer and fuller and more present, they're also easier to MIX.

Phil mentioned this too and it seems like a point I've been missing since I usually work on 2-Tracks usually to rebalance and remaster projects.

 

And room...but yeah, I would *hope* those are a given. It'd take a real moron to think, "Hmmmm, the player sounds like ass and his instrument sounds horrible...why can't I get a good sound?"

Now this is interesting and something to be stived for, good playing, good recording, good sounds, etc. But on the other hand I'm thinking about the sound track played at the end of one of the 'Bourne' movies the other night. It was a tune my Moby I think, the vocals - taken by themselves would be considered terrible. Bad mic/preamp recording, dirty, bandwidth limited, poor performance. In the context of the song however things were totally different. The other instruments in the band carried a really nice full eq spectrum and dynamics balance, the arrangement and melody was pleasing and somehow carried enough quality to allow the cruddy vocals to work. It just made the vocals very poignant, striking, powerful. My attention was drawn to the vocals a lot, how can this be so obviously cruddy but sound so good.

 

Anyway, enough on lo-fi - it just caught me a little off-guard. It worked in rotation but song after song would need something different to keep me listening I'm sure.

[UstadKhanAli]

Phil mentioned this too and it seems like a point I've been missing since I usually work on 2-Tracks usually to rebalance and remaster projects.

 

Hey Kylen!! Yeah, anything in the signal chain really makes a difference, and A/D (and D/A, for that matter, for the monitors) should not be overlooked. As I said, the difference between Digi001 and upgrading to Apogee converters is beyond exaggeration!!!

 

 

Now this is interesting and something to be stived for, good playing, good recording, good sounds, etc. But on the other hand I'm thinking about the sound track played at the end of one of the 'Bourne' movies the other night. It was a tune my Moby I think, the vocals - taken by themselves would be considered terrible. Bad mic/preamp recording, dirty, bandwidth limited, poor performance. In the context of the song however things were totally different. The other instruments in the band carried a really nice full eq spectrum and dynamics balance, the arrangement and melody was pleasing and somehow carried enough quality to allow the cruddy vocals to work. It just made the vocals very poignant, striking, powerful. My attention was drawn to the vocals a lot, how can this be so obviously cruddy but sound so good. Anyway, enough on lo-fi - it just caught me a little off-guard. It worked in rotation but song after song would need something different to keep me listening I'm sure.

 

Yeah, lo-fi can be really great, really effective. This is something I'd want *control* over...not something like, "Hey, I've got an out-of-tune guitar with 23 year old strings and one of them missing and a shoebox full of $5 ceramic mics that I bought at a garage sale. Now....I wonder...should I record "lo-fi" or "lo-fi" now??"

 

I'm always effin' up my sounds - sticking mics in odd places, putting cardboard tubes over them, saturating them, that kind of thing...but I want control over it.

 

And obviously, it's important not to get too carried away with being anal about recording or saying, "Well, gee, I don't have a $2000 tube condenser for my vocals. Damn, I guess I can't record today..."

 

Nawww, you just do the best with what you've got. Be inventive. See, if that were me, I'd think, "Okay, well, lemme see what happens if I record the vocals with that warm sounding dynamic mic that doesn't have much detail and that really bright small diaphragm condenser that has no bottom end simultaneously..." Sometimes, there's workarounds...or if not workarounds, at least ways of getting things to sound much more interesting!!

[Geosync]

I have not been here in a while. but one thing to consider in home recording is "THE HOME" ....

 

What I mean by that is many home studios have a terrible listening environment compounded with the wrong type of monitors for the room and good mics and good pres can actually sound worse, Make sure that you

keep the audio chain balanced. Any weak link in the chain will degrade what you hear. Mic-->Pre-Amp-->Mixer--> A/D--> Wordclock--> D/A--> Monitors

 

just my 2 cents.. wanted a reason to drop in..

[logansc]

Does it screw anything up soundwise to use a preamp after you already have built in pre's on your mixer. Sorry I decided to use your thread rather than start my own, I just need a simple yes or no.

[UstadKhanAli]

No.

[UstadKhanAli]

Hey George!!!!!

[Geosync]

Hi Ken,

 

I'm trying to do a better job of staying in touch

[UstadKhanAli]

Cool!!!!!

[Ethan Winer]

Gee, I hate to be the only nay-sayer here, but this quote from Craig Anderton a few years ago sums up my opinion perfectly:

 

"No listener gives a damn what microphone preamp you used." --Craig Anderton

 

[MrJoshua]

Gee, I hate to be the only nay-sayer here, but this quote from Craig Anderton a few years ago sums up my opinion perfectly:

 

No, but they do care if it sounds bad. Well, if it's really bad, at least. But as long as the preamp is a quality preamp, go for it. You can make a hit record on a Mackie mixer that just costs a few hundred bucks off of eBay these days. It's been done before.

[UstadKhanAli]

Exactly.

[Ethan Winer]

No, but they do care if it sounds bad.

 

Yeah, sure, if you're using a 40 year old Bogen or Radio Shack PA system. Otherwise, if the vocals sound like ass it's probably the singer or operator error by the engineer.

 

You can make a hit record on a Mackie mixer that just costs a few hundred bucks off of eBay these days.

 

I have an old Mackie 1202 - not even the newer VLZ type - and its preamps are fine. Whatever I record plays back sounding like it does in the room. So what else is needed?

 

--Ethan

[MrJoshua]

I have an old Mackie 1202 - not even the newer VLZ type - and its preamps are fine. Whatever I record plays back sounding like it does in the room. So what else is needed? --Ethan

 

Well, that was sort of my point. You need a certain minimum amount of quality (good sound reproduction, low noise, usable gain range), and then after that you get into a world of diminishing returns.

 

Once you have that minimum quality level met by your preamp, then your sound depends more on what you're recording, microphones and their placement, and so forth.

 

But what do I know?

[Ethan Winer]

Well, that was sort of my point. You need a certain minimum amount of quality (good sound reproduction, low noise, usable gain range), and then after that you get into a world of diminishing returns.

 

I'll take that one step further - once you have adequate electronics, there is no need to go further in that direction. Think about it. People obsess over jitter that's 120+ dB below the music, gear that has a frequency response within 0.1 dB from 20 Hz to 20 KHz and beyond, and distortion below 0.001 percent. Who cares about any of that when the room you record and mix in has half a dozen peak/null pairs - all below 300 Hz - that vary 30 dB or even more. See what I mean? Likewise for loudspeaker distortion that's 100 times higher than any A/D/A or even a cheap Soundblaster sound card.

 

Too many people obsess over things that don't matter even a little, while totally ignoring things that matter a lot.

 

--Ethan

[UstadKhanAli]

I have Mackie VLZ Pro mic preamps. And they're fine. But since I upgraded my mic preamps (RNPs, Neve, Peavey VMP-2), my audio has gotten noticeably better. I could make a really good sounding recording with the Mackie, but I feel like it's easier now, and the tracks "stack" much better, and the song generally sounds better. It's not obsessing by any means. The mic preamps I have now are clearer and more open, I'm happy with them, and I can get on with making music.

[alphajerk]

sure you caN make what you have work... i have done it on many occasions. but sometimes, when you have the option of various colors you use them accordingly.

 

its NOT the arrow.

[UstadKhanAli]

I suppose everyone also has a different sense of what is the "dividing line" between what is acceptable to them and what is not.

 

Since we are discussing mic preamps...

 

Mackie VLZ Pro mic preamps might be acceptable to many. And certainly, one could make a strong argument for that since they don't sound horrible and are clean. And for quite some time, I made what are very good sounding recordings on Mackie mic preamps.

 

But for me, I'd have to say that it'd probably be something like the RNPs. They're more open and articulate and "3-dimensional" and "solid" sounding (I know that these are really subjective terms, but since I'm talking about my preferences... ), and I don't feel like I am battling them to get my sound.

 

~~~

 

It's NOT the arrow. But still...one must have an arrow that at least flies straight.

[MrJoshua]

I think a lot of this also stems from people looking to get "that sound" on tape (er ... on hard disk ... whatever). I started getting much better results from my gear when I stopped asking "what can I do to make this sound like this" and started just listening to the sounds I had available and making them fit together. A lot of people are looking for that right mic/preamp/room/performer combination that's going to sound like X, when they might be better off taking what they have and working with it instead.

 

But like I've said before, what do I know? I'm purely a hobbyist at this.

[alphajerk]

It's NOT the arrow. But still...one must have an arrow that at least flies straight.

 

not if you arent trying to hit what is straight in front of you.

[alphajerk]

I started getting much better results from my gear when I stopped asking "what can I do to make this sound like this " and started just listening to the sounds I had available and making them fit together. But like I've said before, what do I know? I'm purely a hobbyist at this.

 

dunno dude, that is pretty zen. i quit trying to make something sound like something else and tried to start making it sound how i wanted.... and sometimes the best ideas came from the cheapest places. i LOVE crappy mics for things.

[UstadKhanAli]

I think a lot of this also stems from people looking to get "that sound" on tape (er ... on hard disk ... whatever). I started getting much better results from my gear when I stopped asking "what can I do to make this sound like this " and started just listening to the sounds I had available and making them fit together. A lot of people are looking for that right mic/preamp/room/performer combination that's going to sound like X, when they might be better off taking what they have and working with it instead.

 

I think of it like this. First of all, I don't want to have to "fight" my audio or my tools. I just want the proper equipment that allows me to 1.) quickly get good sounds without having to jack around, and 2.) enhances the emotion and artistic statement of the song (or at the very least, doesn't interfere with it or downgrade it!! ).

 

I just try and get the best stuff I can afford and then get on with it without making excuses. If a piece of equipment doesn't quite do what I want, I think of alternatives or workarounds, and that in itself can lead to some interesting sounds or creative uses of other equipment.