How to do a mic pre shoot out?

[paul999]

I have been on the forum lately telling tales about the benefits of mic pre's. I feel a bit like I joined the other side(not sure if it is the darkside) I bought a shadow hills pre and have been using my compressors as pre's.

Today I bought 5 more channels of pre's. I can take all of them back if I so desire or I can keep them. 30 days to decide.

I bought:
API a2d(to see what roll the convertors have in this mess called recording plus it has a cool dual coil tap transformer ).
API 512c
FMR rnp

How would you go about testing A/Bing etc. to see what is worth keeping?

[Bigduggieface]

Damn, Trip Nine's

You seem to be in the fortuitous position of being the possessor of a potential embarrassment of riches when it comes to microphone preamplification.

We are all as jealous as hell. Is your towering equipment list not long enough? Does a person need yet more mic pre's? Most of us fledgling recordists are envious of your your seemingly endless list of gear. If I were a Marxist, I'd be storming your walls!

Okay, okay, okay. I'll reluctantly stick to the topic at hand.

Evaluating microphone preamps on this forum is neither scientific nor objective. The proof is in the proverbial puddin'.

Can you post some comparative audio files? I'm curious about whether or not a higher preamp gain setting affects the signal in an attractive way or not. That's all you can really do with a single gain knob like that of the API and the RNP.

I'm no connoisseur of mic pre's. And I'd be suspicious of anyone who claims to be one!

[paul999]

Yes I will post some files. The a2d is the same pre as the 512c but it has a volume knob at the end of the circuit so that you can drive the circuit while not overloading your next source.

[venuestudio]

Paul - nice collection of pre's to work with. Testing to me has two sides, the analytical and the subjective. You can certainly hook up a dummy load to the pre and look at the noise floor, see if it is getting any 60Hz trash in through the power supply, etc. That is all nice to know stuff but completely useless for the intended purpose of the equipment. Bigduggieface hit it on the head, the proof is in the gelatinous snack. As you already know you are going to want to vary one variable at a time and keep the rest of the set up exactly the same or you are not comparing apples to apples. You also need to be careful that the gain applied in each case (as you switch preamp to preamp) is consistant and not giving one amp the precieved edge in volume. IMHO I would first bring in a sinewave with a fixed frequency, maybe 1Khz, that is about mid band. Adjust each preamp output and monitor it until all have the same output. Now you are (somewhat) calibrated. Pick your source, mic it up and leave that setup alone as you change preamps and record the results. This might give you an idea of the tone of each preamp and hopeful help you make a decision.

This is of course only one way to do things, perhaps a bit too sterile but it is how I would do the testing. I like to get all the data first then sit down and do the analysis when I am not working at the set up.
Once you have it in the box and have made some initial listening tests you might want to see how the signals accept eqing and compression. I think that might be an interesting test. And of course there is nothing wrong with looking at the signals on a spectrum analyzer to see if there is anything strange happening.

Or you could just keep that sweet 512 and send the rest back...

Or you could keep them all...

This is me being jealous.....

[paul999]

Thanks VS. I appreciate the scientific perspective on this. I think some of the cool color in the API's and shadow hills are supposed to come out as the transformer is driven. The a2d will allow mw greater flexibility to see this because it has great metering and output attenuation. The RNP being IC based should not be driven so hard (I think). Seeing as I am a more organic engineer, after some thought and consideration of these posts I will test O.H's, snare, kick and electric guitar, with a combination of mic's and pre's. In the O.H's category I will use km 84's. I will play the same drum line through each pre trying to get each pre in to it's best light and see what info avails itself as the test goes on. Not scientific but will give me a feel. I am interested to see how my compressors do in this.

[venuestudio]

Sounds like you have a good handle on it. I agree that it is not going to be very scientific but it is the nature of the beast. I have had the opportunity to use the API on drums once and it is a great sounding pre as I recall. It was some time back so the memory is fuzzy. As I remember it had a smoothing effect as you pushed it, not like compression but a way of digging out the harmonics at the lower end of the frequency spectrum. It was one of those instances where you know why they are favored on drums. Good luck, enjoy!!

[paul999]

I watched an episode of Ronin's recording show where he did a shoot out of the RNP Aurteur and true solo. I am going to model my experiments after his, sort of.

Ronan's Recording Show: Recording Studio Tours, Gear Reviews Interviews and Music Production Tips

[venuestudio]

Good to hear he liked the True Systems as much as I do. I bought the Precision 8 sight unseen. I don't regret it.

[Husky Band]

Back in the day when we were testing analog tape recorders we would record a song on one track and then bounce it back and forth until it became noise. The more times we could bounce it the lower the signal to noise and distortion of the deck. Is there any way you could come up with a method like this to test pre-amps?

[paul999]

VS- I have been looking at them alot and wondering how they stack up. I have a feeling my RNP will be going back I will still be shooting it out though.

Thats interesting Husky I am not sure if I can do such a test. I was thinking of hooking up a noisy mic, and seeing how many db's of gain I could add before room noise hit a pre determined level.