Anderton
Sound on Sound magazine did a very interesting preamp "shootout" a few years back of multiple preamps at various price points. It involved blind testing so no one could think one logo sounded better than another logo (oops, I mean "preamp"
). IIRC the hands-down winner was an ART preamp that cost $149 or something like that.
This isn't to say a quality preamp can't make an audible improvement difference. I bought a Radial Engineering direct box because the minute I plugged in my guitar, it delivered every nuance of the pickups. However, I think in many cases what causes someone to like one preamp over another is the presence of an input transformer. A truly high-quality input transformer is like a "magic component" that serves as a signal processor...similarly to how tubes or tape process the sound in a way people find desirable.
Back in the early days of digital I was visiting Wendy Carlos and she had one of those ancient Akai MG1212 digital recorders. I had never thought they sounded particularly good, but her studio sounded great. I asked her whether she'd replaced the electronics or something. She said no, but she had transformers in her mixer, which she had done on purpose for the sonic benefits. There was no question it made a difference. Wendy, being effing brilliant, then launched into a technical discussion of why transformers were so helpful in improving the sonics of digital.
Interestingly enough when SONAR introduced Console Emulation, my first reaction was "snake oil." I figured they just introduced a little bit of slightly different distortion in each channel so it would have a perceived wider soundstage and some non-linearities. I was very surprised after testing to find that there was a good input transformer emulation as well. You can hear this for yourself - crank up the drive all the way with bass. It's one of my favorite "effects" for bass, just as it was back in the day when I was plugging basses into DIs in analog studios.
I read that SOS article before I got my SSL, partially because it was highlighted in my research into the SSL unit itself. Its a good read, I learned a few things from it.
One of the things "missing" from that article was that all of the preamps were fed a healthy input, which is where mic preamps seem to fall down in my (limited) experience. Many of the pres I have used sound fine up to about noon on the dial, but not so much after.
My SSL unit came in "2nd"to the ($250) ART unit in the article, which contributed to my decision to pick it up. I also bought it used @ about 50% of retail (minty). The SSL isn't regarded as the best ever, I might have picked an API or Focusrite (or ART!), but sometimes you pick the deal at hand.
In practice, it seems the thing I like best is that the SSL has 75Db of gain, which seems higher than some. It lets me keep even low gain (SC guitars, SM7) inputs healthy and under noon. I don't know if it has an input transformer, and haven't experimented with the higher gain "character" settings yet.
I'm also a bit suspicious of the console emulation feature, I have some mixes pending, and I'm going to compare them with it turned on and off.