external Mic Pre amp

In the $300 - $500 range, maybe.
$500 - $1000 range, yes.
$1000 + range, oh hells yeah.

I know that there are some very nice single channel pre's in the $500-$700 area like the ISA One, the Twin-Finity 710, the Grace M101 and the True Systems P-Solo.

Anything cheaper than that will pretty much be a lateral move. IMO anyway.

There may be some $300-ish pre's that'll add some color but they would be few.

Mike

I agree with Mike. 

Reading various forums over the years and from my own experience, it seems you have to spend $500+ per channel to really hear much of a difference. Even then, none of us can really tell you if a new, expensive mic pre is going to make much difference in your project. Only you can judge that and the only way you'll be able to tell is to try them out. I know that's not always possible, but that's what it boils down to.

In my experience, save your money until you can afford something really good. Otherwise, you're just moving sideways.

 

well, you might consider a valve pre if your mic is pretty clean. but it depends on what sound youre after.
 
I use a valve mic for vox (AKG solid tube with a telefunken tube) so I purchased a BAE DMP which is solid state. my first choice was a UA 610 Solo, but valve+valve might be a little too much.  the reason I got the DMP over the Daking was because it had a pre and post gain and I wanted to be able to drive the pre a little bit for some saturation.  but this all in service of music that *I make*.  I don't know what kind of music you make or what kind of vocalists you like or aspire to sound like.  and you may find that the part of the chain that will help you get the sound that youre after might not necessitate a fancy mic pre; it might be a delay or a nice reverb plugin or compressor.
 
care to fill us on what your sound is?
EDIT: what Joel77said is right: save up and really buy a nice pre. my DMP was my first ever outboard pre. i'd been using a motu 896 since I started with DAWs back in 2001. for a while I looked at the ISA One, but there are loads of them on ebay at deep discount which tells me that a lot of people upgrade. The Daking and the 610 were harder to find used and when I did find them, they didn't have much of a discount, which tells me they have a better reputation than other "low-end" pres.
 
but even then, I might still say that the pre might not be the most important component of "your vocal sound." to be honest, I don't even know if the DMP was the best purchase for me. it sounds great, but I don't think that the quality of my music has shot through the roof. but I do know that I can still get a fair price back for the DMP. if I'd bought an ISA One, i'd get taken to the cleaners on the used market.

Thanks very much guys-great info. The mic pres I use (up to this point) are the Mackie vz3. They sound good to me. I tried the Octacapture after I posted. The signal is much hotter (visually) wave form and peak flags, etc.  without being louder.
The difference I hear with my old ears seems like:
 
The Roland MP's have more, well, body is the best term I can think of. The orig (mackievlz3's) sound tinnier (thinner). You guys are sure right , it is tough, especially for someone like me. I immediately liked the sound of the Roalnd vocal recording -same vocal track , etc) immediately but the Layla3g gives the whole mix more body whare as the roland total mix is like the mic pres test only revevesed. Sorry for the rambling.
 
I cannot raise the input signal anymore on the mackie pre to record vocals, so I guess the difference is headroom-Is that correct?
 
Tons of room on the Roland. Guess by all rights I need to do the same test with the Echo Layla3G mic pres (even though I read they are same as the mackie pres)
 
I really appreciate the feedback-you guys are great.
 
I agree with all points and will not buy a mic pre. After much experimenting I may look at mics-but I guess I have much testing to do now
 
regards
Stratman

Tried a fw more things. The Roland Octa pres definitely give me much more , well, headroom I guess. I am a pro guitar player but a home studio guy with this stuff for many moons so my nomanclture is certainly suspect :-)
 
I tried everything to get the same ampount of input out of the mackie pre, impossible-just clipped and went nuts.
So...........I have an idea but have to figure out the routing.
 
Since I have the Roland octa capture collecting dust (untill I need it to play a function or something, that's why I bought it) why not use it solely as a mic pre for my vocals. The Layla 3G would still be my soundcard but the Roalnd would would be my mic pre.
 
I have an idea about routing but it's getting too late for today.
 
BTW, I was very happy to see the consensus is if it's good it's good. Makes it easier to try other things without getting frustrated.
 
when I get all this sorted out I would like to post a short clip of something I wrote a long time ago with the vocals recorded both ways. Just for feedback
 
Thanks again Guys
Stratman

Hi Psychobillybob,
Have you heard any of the Warm Audio stuff? I've been looking at their 500 series modules for a little bit and have been curious....

Dean

Yes, more money on preamps will make a difference - but it is subtle, not striking.  But it does add up.  The biggest difference is in gain, so that you can make better mic placement choices, backing off from the source, getting more air or room.  A good preamp is well worth having for solo and overdubs.

As far as the SOS test - I wouldn't expect there to be much differerence using mic preamps in a general setting.  The differences show up more when pushing the mic preamps, using them for their stregnths.  Again, not night and day or "it was like lifting a veil of my sound."  At first, you might not even notice it.  But your ear will figure it out.  Also, the lowest common denominator in your system will hold down the difference.  But once you do start to hear it, it is there.  You can hear deeper into the individual sounds captured, you can hear the little hairs on sound, you can feel them on the saturation.  And then you start using that knowledge to better place your mics.

Unless you have unlimited money or are in the business selling studio bling, it doesn't make sense to spend thousands on a vintage Neve module or something.  If you want a good all-arounder w/ a touch of transformer goodness the ISA One is a classic Neve design.  And it has lots of singer-songwriter tricks.  My favorite new preamp these days is the warm audio.  As noted above, based upon the classic api 312, which you've heard on tons of albums - as well as CDs.  Thick but still punchy sound, tons of headroom.  Works very well to give an analog ... roundness and heft to digital recording.  You can get either of those for $400-500 and is a tool you won't have to get rid of when you hit the bigtime and afford the old neves, etc.

Razor - I've got the 1/2 rack Warm audio preamp here at home.  Like I said above, it is good stuff.  We shot it out at a friend's studio against his "real" api's and, if there was a difference, is was a thin red hair.  Good components, good build.  I'm sure Bryce's api slot units are as well built tho I haven't heard them.  I am waiting on his next preamp, which is the wa12 but with, I think, a clean mode that takes the transfomer out of the circuit.  anyway, it is supposed to be the same and different.

@

I "love" my peavey vmp2! Silky smooth vocals connected to a akg414. Shop for one on ebay. Great pre that rivals the upper offerings.

For my needs -Only on channel XLR in but I need at leaset 2 or 3 outs. This wil fit my monitoring scheme. I am still trying to get the Roland OCta caopture to do that but cAn't seem to gwet the outs mapped where I want-but the mic pres are nice.

Oh, and one other kinda important thing.


If you send a line level output into a I/O box's mic/line input and it doesn't have a true hardware mic preamp bypass... guess what? You are gonna be listening to the sound of your industrial grade mic preamp (turned down real low) and you might form an opinion that the external preamp sounds similar to the industrial grade stuff.

You'll want an I/O box with actual, real life, line level inputs if you actually want to hear the wonderful sound of an actual no holds barred pre amp.


all the best,
mike



edit spelling

Hi folks,
Just some more information regarding mic pres. This thread got me interested in doing some A/B tests so this morning I took the most neutral and precise mics that I own (a matched pair of Earthworks SDC's) and set them next to one another on a stand. I then ran one to my Great River pre and one to my Sebatron. You can see what it looks like here (ignore the LDC in that shot...I was using it for something else):

http://www.fade.net/EW-mics.jpg

The GR is a Neve style pre and the Sebatron is a tube pre. I then sang a couple phrases into the mics and A/B'd them. For both pre's I pushed the input gain pretty hard to try and highlight differences (but certainly not harder than I would for doing actual production work).

A couple observations:

1. They are very different. The Sebatron has a lot more low end information and harmonic content, while the GR has some content at about 1.5k that makes vox cut through a bit but also can result is sounding a bit nasal (on my voice particularly).

2. Unexpectedly (to me at least), the volumes are very different. I peak normalized both tracks to .1 db higher than the loudest peak in the louder track and the interesting part is that the quieter parts still show 3db(!) of difference. That is, both tracks now peak at exactly -8.0db, which I thought would result in the quieter parts being fairly closely matched, but they aren't at all. The tube pre is almost displaying some compression characteristics, but I suspect the actual difference is the amount of low frequency information present in the output from the tube pre is causing the quiet parts to have more energy.

In any case, with regards to the SOS article and not really being able to tell the difference between different preamps, or Mike's observation that it takes a really great singer to really tell, that's quite different than the results I got this morning in this application. OTOH, I am a singer, so maybe the difference I hear between the pre's means I am a GREAT singer, even first thing in the morning and when I'm not really trying! Yeah...I'm a great singer....that's my story and I'm sticking to it :)

If anyone wants to hear my comparison let me know and I'll throw it up on the web so you can D/L it and hear for yourself.

Dean

Dean,

you probably are a great singer - so lay that aside.  Different preamps sound different, just like mics.  They have different eq plots.  Ideally, they shouldn't, but there you go.  However, these differences aren't blatent - in that one will sound great and the next like crap.  Put different mics and preamps up and you are likely to get a reasonable facimile of whatever you are recording.  Don't we all start out this way?  And it works.

What works better is tailoring your equipment to the recording situation at hand.  If you back off a dynamic mic through a mackie preamp, you might not get enough volume or too much noise.  Do the same w/ an api (or GR or Sebatron) and it sounds just right.  Same w/ what you are recording.  A male voice in your example above might benefit from more low end in one song, but in the next busy mix some cut (w/o the nasel) might work better.  If you are familiar w/ you tools and techniques you might choose the appropriate preamp.  Or you could use eq, which works well, but we all know that capturing the right sound at the source is the best way and is the reason engineers get paid.

The SOS article/test was a good one, appolgies to Mike, in that it attempted to put all the preamps tested into a rather general and sterile recording situation.  And guess what, all the equipment sounded fine.  But didn't tell the whole story (see above).

For many, the cost of higher end stuff isn't justified by the returns.  They might not be able to tell the difference between a built-in preamp and a gob-smacking one because their monitoring system doesn't really shine on the difference or the ears can't differentiate the difference or some other reason.  But record the same song in a pro studio w/ a pro engineer and the home recordist will wonder why they can't sound like that. 

But there isn't really a question to someone new to recording whether they should buy a typical interface or spend that money on a good preamp w/ no way to record it except through their on-board card.  At the same time, there are plenty of home recordists w/o a bunch of outboard that do great sounding recordings.  Better equipment won't have too great of an impact on their sound, tho I bet it makes it easier and quicker to get outstanding product.  It is the ears that make the difference.

High end gear, used correctly, makes a difference.  A small but decernable difference.  The bigger difference is made by judgement augemented by experience.  If you can't afford that mega buck channel, it doesn't mean you can't make good, in fact, great recordings.  But it does give that last bit of shine and ease to production and allows you to make recording decisions based upon positive, not negative choices.

@

AT


Yes, more money on preamps will make a difference - but it is subtle, not striking.  But it does add up.  The biggest difference is in gain, so that you can make better mic placement choices, backing off from the source, getting more air or room.  A good preamp is well worth having for solo and overdubs.

As far as the SOS test - I wouldn't expect there to be much differerence using mic preamps in a general setting.  The differences show up more when pushing the mic preamps, using them for their stregnths.  Again, not night and day or "it was like lifting a veil of my sound."  At first, you might not even notice it.  But your ear will figure it out.  Also, the lowest common denominator in your system will hold down the difference.  But once you do start to hear it, it is there.  You can hear deeper into the individual sounds captured, you can hear the little hairs on sound, you can feel them on the saturation.  And then you start using that knowledge to better place your mics.

Unless you have unlimited money or are in the business selling studio bling, it doesn't make sense to spend thousands on a vintage Neve module or something.  If you want a good all-arounder w/ a touch of transformer goodness the ISA One is a classic Neve design.  And it has lots of singer-songwriter tricks.  My favorite new preamp these days is the warm audio.  As noted above, based upon the classic api 312, which you've heard on tons of albums - as well as CDs.  Thick but still punchy sound, tons of headroom.  Works very well to give an analog ... roundness and heft to digital recording.  You can get either of those for $400-500 and is a tool you won't have to get rid of when you hit the bigtime and afford the old neves, etc.

Razor - I've got the 1/2 rack Warm audio preamp here at home.  Like I said above, it is good stuff.  We shot it out at a friend's studio against his "real" api's and, if there was a difference, is was a thin red hair.  Good components, good build.  I'm sure Bryce's api slot units are as well built tho I haven't heard them.  I am waiting on his next preamp, which is the wa12 but with, I think, a clean mode that takes the transfomer out of the circuit.  anyway, it is supposed to be the same and different.

@

Some of your response reminds me of how I was tryin in simple (guitar rocker" terms) to explain about the difference between the Mackie and the roland OCtacapture pres. The Octa capture was a much more full bodied-robust sound while the Mackies were my reg gotta eq and compress and all the rest to get the fullness. So The Roland OCtacapture pres are obviously better made or better suited for my my "loud" vocal - I have a very strong voice.The mic pres, MAckie to Octaxcapture I truly mean it's thin to full big time. Never would have realized it if I didn't get the Roland.
 
@ MikeMQ: I am a great singer-always played guitar but also was pushed to sing lead in every band I have ever been in. Bummed me out because in my eyes I wanted to be the guitar player. Think of my voice as if Bob Seger and Roy Orbison were merged in some sci fi machine and came out with major traits of each complimmeting each other. The Rocker-Crooner monster appears.
 
Genmtleman:
 
I asked these questions here because I knew I would get great answers(for the most part) I wish I could better describe the difference between the mackie and roland micpres. More headroom and full bodied are the only laymans terms that come to mind.
But these 2 words are HUGE in this snse-with everyting else being equal and I am the vocalists this is what I have determined after many, many tracks.
 
No I must find a way to implement the Octacapture as a mic pre only due to personal routing options I must have (Home Studio, remember)
Hopefully I can do this.
 
Thanks for all the wonderful and thought envoking information.
 
Forum at it's best right here-IMHO

AT


Dean,

you probably are a great singer - so lay that aside.  Different preamps sound different, just like mics.  They have different eq plots.  Ideally, they shouldn't, but there you go.  However, these differences aren't blatent - in that one will sound great and the next like crap.  Put different mics and preamps up and you are likely to get a reasonable facimile of whatever you are recording.  Don't we all start out this way?  And it works.

What works better is tailoring your equipment to the recording situation at hand.  If you back off a dynamic mic through a mackie preamp, you might not get enough volume or too much noise.  Do the same w/ an api (or GR or Sebatron) and it sounds just right.  Same w/ what you are recording.  A male voice in your example above might benefit from more low end in one song, but in the next busy mix some cut (w/o the nasel) might work better.  If you are familiar w/ you tools and techniques you might choose the appropriate preamp.  Or you could use eq, which works well, but we all know that capturing the right sound at the source is the best way and is the reason engineers get paid.

The SOS article/test was a good one, appolgies to Mike, in that it attempted to put all the preamps tested into a rather general and sterile recording situation.  And guess what, all the equipment sounded fine.  But didn't tell the whole story (see above).

For many, the cost of higher end stuff isn't justified by the returns.  They might not be able to tell the difference between a built-in preamp and a gob-smacking one because their monitoring system doesn't really shine on the difference or the ears can't differentiate the difference or some other reason.  But record the same song in a pro studio w/ a pro engineer and the home recordist will wonder why they can't sound like that. 

But there isn't really a question to someone new to recording whether they should buy a typical interface or spend that money on a good preamp w/ no way to record it except through their on-board card.  At the same time, there are plenty of home recordists w/o a bunch of outboard that do great sounding recordings.  Better equipment won't have too great of an impact on their sound, tho I bet it makes it easier and quicker to get outstanding product.  It is the ears that make the difference.

High end gear, used correctly, makes a difference.  A small but decernable difference.  The bigger difference is made by judgement augemented by experience.  If you can't afford that mega buck channel, it doesn't mean you can't make good, in fact, great recordings.  But it does give that last bit of shine and ease to production and allows you to make recording decisions based upon positive, not negative choices.

@

Hi AT,
Could not agree more with your analysis (especially the part about me being a great singer...I'm all about the affirmations this morning ). 


Truth is, I'm in a purpose-built, treated room using pretty good mics, a Lynx Aurora 16 and monitoring with Focals. Pretty much all of those make more of a difference than the mic pre (maybe with the exception of the converters). My experiment this morning was really to see (after controlling for other factors as much as I could) how much of a difference there was between a couple of the preamps I own. Do I think that one was better or worse? Not at all...as you said, it's really what works better for what application. I was, however, surprised as the amount of difference, particularly with regards to dynamics, but also frequency. Enough so that I thought it might be interesting to talk about here and demonstrate if anyone wants to hear it as well. But that certainly does not change the accuracy of your points above. My experiment was essentially done in a vacuum, and real recordings aren't 


Dean

Context is important in all of this...a pre-amp is only as valuable as its place in the general scheme of things, ie: If you are only recording a voice and a guitar, the pre may have very little (almost negligible) difference since the EQ it creates (yes they all capture this in different ways, hence the flavor of certain pre-amps) will be matched by the instrument used (vox vs stringed instrument)...

If however you are recording a lot of stuff, bass, keys, BGV, horns, percussion, synths, etc...then the EQ space gets filled up by the same treatment done by the same pre-amp...and THIS makes a huge difference when you go to try and create space in the mix...it just isn't there no matter how you tweak it...because the original point of capture "veneered" everything the same...

This is the point of major console approach...each channel lets the engineer cut/boost/tweak the particular channel to eliminate or create the space he will need in the future mix as they track it...

But again it is context...with just a few things in the mix...the preamp is not as critical...heck you can get away without a preamp if your levels all match...but if you are having difficulty trying to mix stuff together then the recording stage may be the issue...


Not every dish needs garlic, some need butter, some need cinnamon...pre-amps are basically sautes for the mix...if you are cooking everything in the same pan they won't be noticed...but if you are making a dish that requires significant flavor a pre-amp is very useful.