How many of you use mic preamps for your mics, either live or when recording? I have a few mics I plug directly into a BR1600 and have not used a mic preamp before but someone told me it was a good idea. He never expanded on why it's a good idea.
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I've been home recording for about 7 years now. Recently I bought a cheap-o 2 channel tube mic preamp. Basically, it runs the mic signal thru tubes, has a couple of changeable parameters (drive, low pass filter, phantom power, and gain). If you (not if, you SHOULD use a large diaphragm condenser while recording vocals) use a large diaphragm condenser mic, and run it thru a tube pre-amp, the difference with and without will destroy your senses.
Without it (which is the way I've been doing it for years, dumb-assed me) it sounds decent, if you have a nice mic. With it, I cant even begin to explain how much more full, presenceful, crisp, and generally better it sounds with even the cheapest of tube pre's ($99 at GC).
We're almost done recording, and I so cannot wait to post it for all of you to hear. I'll post all the equipment involved, and for simplicity/frugality (aside from the mic and Vetta) I think you would be amazed by the quality.
Our vocalist went from sounding decent on the recording, to sounding like he was in a world class studio, thats why its a good idea
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almost forgot, we tried the pre-amp thru the PA at practice, and while it sounded great, just like any pre-amping with a gain stage, made the mic feedback with a much weaker signal than without, and had a tendancy to pick up too much of the instrumentation, as the mic we tried was NOT directional. I'm sure with a directional mic, the results would have been outstanding.
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i use an avalon AD2022 class A mic preamp. it was the BEST thing i EVER bought for my studio. everything sounds good through it. i use it with a nuemann u87i condenser for vocals, sennhesier md421 for guitars, along with the standard shure sm mics for other instruments.
the sound is SO much more transparent and the signal is much cleaner at higher gain levels. we have no problem with getting hot levels with low noise. that makes mixing a lot easier.
get one. even an ART tube MP is decent.....i still use a couple of those even though i have the avalon.GEAR:
some guitars...WITH STRINGS!!!! most of them have those sticks like on guitar hero....AWESOME!!!!
some amps...they have some glowing bottle like things in them...i think my amps do that modelling thing....COOL, huh?!?!?!
and finally....
i have those little plastic "chips" used to hit the strings...WHOA!!!!
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I use several mic preamps. All of them are selfbuilded clones of Api, SSL, Amek and other stuff. There really are differences in this stuff: discrete, ic, transformer balanced, electronical balanced, tube, fake tube.
Oh and on a side note those "tube" mic preamps mentioned above for $99 and the likes are not real tube preamps, those are fake tube mic preamps. The amplification is done by IC's (cheap and small). They just have a marketing tube which is seriously undersupplied voltagewise and the amplificated signal is running through this tube to give it some small distortion. BTW i have a tube mic preamp with 2 tubes per channel and it's really clean sounding, much cleaner than some other solid state mic preamps.
Really tube mic preamps need voltages of 170V and more and that's expensive to do because of big psu's. That's also why real tube mic preamps start at roughly 1K and go from there.
Just to clarify i don't think those mic preamps sound like shit (at least not compared to stuff in their price range) but don't be fooled by the marketing tube and think that you need this because of the warmth a tube preamp has.
Flo
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Oh almost forgot the first question in the thread. Normally build-in stuff is not as great as dedicated units. That's why generally you can say you will get an improvement if you use dedicated external gear.
But it also depends on the stuff you look at. If you use a super cheap mic preamp i am not sure if there will be a night and day difference. Then again some stuff as quite good build in mic preamps. On the extreme a old neve console has mic preamps build in which are better than 95% of all dedicated mic preamps. That's the fact why racked neve mixing console modules are so famous and sought after.
I would order a mic preamp which is in the price league your willing to spend and do some recordings and compare it to your boss mic preamp. If it's not worth it you can always send it back (don't know how it's in america but here in germany we normally have 2 weeks to decide). But i think you should get an improvement. Today you already get some nice mic preamps for a small budget.
Oh and keep in mind that the real beauty of nice mic preamps often comes out when doing the mixdown. On a single track a mic preamp impact normally isn't that great. But when you mix 16 or more tracks done with a nice mic preamp and combine them to your final stereo track all the good characteristics are amplified. The same goes for bad characteristics. If your mic preamp is noisy the noise will get added with every track you used this mic preamp.
Flo
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Can't have a badass sound without a good pre. IMO.
I like Neve type pres the most because they add warmth that I love.
API stuff is good too.
Avalons are great if you want to have exactly the same sound on the tape wich you are hearing standing in front of the specific instrument/cabinet/amp/whatever."There is nothing more fearful than imagination without taste" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"To be stupid, selfish and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost" - Gustave Flaubert
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