Mic Pres

Let us know how you get on Mike

...you need some new mic pres No you don't this is bad advice! The Mackie VLZ is more than enough to make a great recording through. You probably need a better microphone for the job especially if it's a great acoustic guitar sound you are after.

You need a decent larger diaphragm condenser mike, that is going to give you the sound you are after much quicker than any mic pre. There are some great cheaper ones especially from Rode. And also some good old fashioned mic technique. None of your mics seem to fit into that vein.

Of course a great and much more expensive mic pre is a nice thing to have, no argument there but it is not necessarily the first thing you need.

Thanks Jeff

I believe Beag was just kidding around with me LOL

I was writing as you beat me to the post.  Thanks for the heads up on the Mackie.  Im wondering how/if it is better or worse than the Allen & Heath.

As I mentioned before I got to read your post,  Im looking for a better sound now out of my Acoustic guitar tracks and Vox.  Wondering what mics I might need to move to with out forking out a $1000 for each   but do better than where I am currently at.

Jeff - did you miss the  in Beagle's post? 

You really do need better microphones, but I'm going to skip that to suggest that there is some truth to Beagle's suggestion.

There is nothing terrible about A&H or Mackie preamplifiers, heck even the M-Audio can be serviceable. But they are not in the same league as dedicated microphone preamplifiers that don't cost a lot more.

For starters, let's just skip past the part where every microphone preamplifier design sounds different. They do! You may not be able to hear the differences yet, but you will. AND if you can't then it is a little silly to spend too much on them.

The biggest benefit of a slightly better preamplifier is that it won't make you work so hard. The preamplifiers you own are known to be a little lite in the headroom department. We're not talking about measured headroom - there are too many tricks to measuring headroom vs dynamic range vs S/N ratio, etc. We're talking about a perfect take that is spoiled by a little 'crunchiness' as you exceed the voltage rails of the power supply... not the end of the world, and certainly avoidable, but heck, if you can make the problem go away... (and it is just too darned easy to do this, especially on the Mackie and A&H mixers.)

There are LOTs of stand-alone microphone preamplifiers with oodles (that's a technical term) of headroom, and that's what I usually recommend to folks who ask. Oodles of headroom means you can be a little more dynamic, a little more expressive even, without worrying about it.

Amongst the no-longer-manufactured class I like the Gaines Audio MP2, the SPL Micman (which also has oodles of gain if you happen to be messing with ribbon microphones), and the Groove Tubes MP family. I think you can get any of these for around $150 to $200 per channel, maybe less. That's not a lot to pay for two good - easy to use - channels of microphone preamplifiers. (NB- the Groove Tubes preamplifiers require a Groove Tubes power supply and cable, and some unscrupulous sellers don't include them. If you can find the whole kit they are really cool!)

If you are a DIY type you can scrounge around for old channel strips (I have a pair from a Trident Tri-Mix that sound awesome when they work, but they are not the most reliable!) or old gain cards - I have a bunch of Melcor cards that I've used to build preamplifiers, they sound really nice, almost like an API.

And there are worse crimes than making recording easier.

The problem with gear is that sometimes we forget why cool gear is cool. It isn't cool JUST because some famous dude used it - but it is cool if it brings something to the dance. And I'm as guilty as the next guy, so learn from my mistakes!

If I had it to do all over again I'd start with microphones, and I'd do nothing but gather some really great microphones. What constitutes a really great microphone differs from person to person, but that's where I'd start. Then I'd focus on preamplifiers, and then my monitoring system (room, loudspeakers, amplifier), and then everything else. You can make an argument to start with the monitoring system, but in hindsight I think start at the other end of the chain.

Acoustic guitar and voice can be darned difficult to capture well... but it is so much fun trying to do so!!!!

I do appreciate Reece's humor and I am sorry for sounding too serious. 

The only part that rings true for is the first line of Bills post...You really do need better microphones. The rest I don't agree with at all.

In order of importance, please note:

1     Great piece of Music
2     Guitar performance
3     Guitar
4     Microphone and placement
5     Mic Pre
6     A to D conversion

See where the Mic Pres sit on that list pretty low down.

I would rather a handful of expensive mikes and use the Mackie VLZ as the pres any day over a bunch of average mics and a whole lot of expensive pres. The former will sound way better by miles.

Sound on Sound recently did a shoot out of expensive Mic Pres and compared them to average ones like Mackie etc. In the end people only imagined they heard differences when told what they were listening to but in a blind test may could not tell a thing. Sort of reinforced my argument. But I must also say I am talking about all these pres non expensive and expensive being used with moderate amounts of gain and being used right in the most linear part of their response. The place where some of the more expensive pres really shine is being driven hard etc and being pushed gain wise too so they start to impose their sound onto the signal. Cheaper pres would not fair too well under the same conditions. But if we keep things on a more even keel then they are much closer than you think.

I am pretty sure Bill and many other Mic Pre lovers would probably have a hard time in a very controlled A/B blind test. Even the standard Mic pre in a lot of mixers are pretty good these days. They offer low distortion, high headroom, low noise etc..Very transparent sound etc..The Pres in the VS700R are very nice and I don't doubt the ones in the new Studio Capture would also be very very nice too.

I recently mastered a beautiful album that was mixed by an award winning mix engineer here in Australia. During the mix the engineer asked the client what expensive mikes and pres he was using because he was so impressed with the sound. He nearly went into shock when the client said he used a Rode NT1 mic for every track and some cheap Fostex stand alone recorder with pres in it that were probably not even in the same league as the Mackie pres! Totally debunked the expensive mic and pre myth.

If you are careful you can set even an average Mic pre to be right in the most linear part of its range and it wont come anywhere near clipping as this guy obviously did. The music and the performance was just so good it out shone the mikes and the pre by miles. 

I have produced many albums that involved expensive mics and Mackie pres (1604, older model even)  and the result: magnificent. I have also produced albums using expensive mics and expensive pres and the result: still magnificent.  Was it ten times better than the first case, absolutely not in fact no one here would pick the difference I am totally confident of that.

"I would rather a handful of expensive mikes and use the Mackie VLZ as the pres any day over a bunch of average mics and a whole lot of expensive pres. The former will sound way better by miles."




I would rather have a couple really good mic pres and some ok mics... I think you get better sound that way.

I started by slowly buying what many would call nice or expensive mics while using ok pre amps. Now I have nice pre amps and am learning that I really had no idea what a nice mic was.

I'm starting to get in to really nice mics... the benefits of which you can not enjoy without a really nice preamp.

In the meantime I have come to form an opinion that I would have benefited from owning a really good mic pre amp before thinking I knew what a really good mic was.

That's just my personal perspective which is the result of my personal journey.

I really think I should have gotten at least one great pre amp before collecting mics. The awareness of how it worked out for me causes me to make mention of this when I see other opinions expressed so forcefully.

So, my list would look like this:

1     Great piece of Music  
2     Guitar performance  
3     Guitar 
4     Mic Pre 
5     Microphone
6     A to D conversion

I think mic placement doesn't quite fit on the list in an orderly fashion as I consider that with regards to several factors on that list.

I do admit that appreciating the good mic pre will not happen instantly... it takes years of thoughtful listening to understand what great mic pres do that the pretty good ones can't... and that's the same for microphones too. A funny thing happens, once you get used too and learn what the good stuff sounds like, the way the other stuff sounds like sticks out like a sore thumb. 

I go back and forth between different grades of mix and match gear in my location recording work. I get reminded of this frequently.

Anyways, just throwing out some ideas to balance the discussion.


all the best,
mike

Great comments everyone!


Ive often considered making an SOP (Standard Op) folder to write down what mics, and the entire chain, setup and mic placement for each type of recording whether its an Acoustic, Electric guitar, drum, etc...  

I imagine those that do this on a daily basis have their procedures memorized with what equipment to use for what circumstances.  I cant imagine the number of possibilities there are in a professional setup and to have to keep up with them all-WOW

Thanks so much for the inputs  

My priorities would be:

1. Great sounding room, properly treated
2. Great song, well arranged & rehearsed
3. Great performance
4. Well set up, tuned instruments
5. Suitable microphone/pre-amp combination. To my mind if one is of lower quality than the other, the lower quality item will trump the better one.
6. Good monitoring