Do you drive your pre-amps hard?

[richiebee]

Just wondering if there's an advantage these days to running as close to the red as possible? I never do, but wonder if I'm missing out.

R.

[brandondrury]

I've noticed with my Vintech 1272s that there is a point where the peaks will be rounded off without hearing any "bad" clipping sounds. The sound is a tad fuzzy. You can really hear it on long, loud vocal passages. This kind of thing is pretty cool on some indie rock stuff or maybe if you were going for production like My Chemical Romance. Really, it's fairly subtle what it does, but it does add this low mid thing that could be called a "vintage" sound if you wanted to go that route.

Overall, I don't think it's all THAT usual of a trick. It's nice to have it, but it's not like a singer wanting a "distorted" vocal is going to be happy with it. You are going to need something more drastic to satisfy that sort of person. However, it is the kind of thing that would take a "pristine" vocal and sort of crap all over it. So, it seams like you have more to loose with this trick than to gain.

Also with the 1272 there is sort of a brick wall overload type of deal where it sounds like a digital pop. This has not been good for anything.


Now my Presonus M80 is a totally different story. I have 4 tracks of it being entirely overloaded on every heavy song I've done with the band I've been producing for the past zillion years. I come straight out the DI of my Rivera and into the Presonus. I overload the living shit out of it. I'm talking about full red death. The sound coming from the Rivera is mostly clean, but has all the low end rolled of it.

I find adding this wretched fuzz to a guitar signal in just the right moderation is enough to really make my guitars come to life. On their own, they make the worst sounding tones you've ever heard in your life. However, when blended with some Royer R121 guitar tracks, the end result is quite pleasing to my ears. This is a trick and I don't expect everyone to like it.

That's pretty much my experience with overdriving preamps.

Brandon

[dach]

Does your gear sound better when it's driven hard? I'd say you're only missing out if you don't at least try to learn where the "sweet spots" are on the gear you use and if things change when interacting with other gear... otherwise pay more attention to the other stuff and just get it recorded...

[brandondrury]

I'd say you're only missing out if you don't at least try to learn where the "sweet spots" are on the gear you use

Maybe it's just lack of experience, ignorance, or both but I find it extremely tough to find the time for this sort of thing in the middle of a session. There are so many things that go wrong, that I've never really noticed a time when the sweet spot on a preamp kicked in.

I've read that most people like to crank up their preamps quite a bit. I usually do this when I can, but it's not something that made a clear and obvious difference to me.

Of course, I have to say that my engineering experience has been the complete opposite of "scientific". It seams like I seldom record the same instrument twice and if I do, so much has changed that there is no reference. In other words, I have no idea why I got something write once and totally missed the mark another time. It blows ass, and it's part of the reason that I've changed my studio's business model.

However, the other side of the coin is that I've been forced to really listen to my monitors and make nearly random guesses until I get what I'm looking for. Luckily, the guesses seam to get about 1% less random every year or so.

Brandon

[richiebee]

Yeah, I don't ever have time for shitting around when I have a client in either. Not only because the fucking control room is so far from the recording room that it's a big time waster to keep going between the two spaces (it's rare that I have an assistant), but also because the kind of clients I get wanna be in and out in no time. They're usually working as session musicians for someone else with really small (or empty) pockets. You can't expect too much from these people.

I suspect for the stuff I'm doing, there's no benefit to driving the preamps hard.

Just wondered as a general rule because I was in someone elses studio with my band recording, and the engineer was really trying to push the gain to the max. Completely different genre to what I record, but I wondered why he took the chance when the gear is of the quality where utilizing every bit of gain available is not so important.


R.

[brandondrury]

I know some people swear by hitting their preamps hard. I'd heard of guys who keep try to keep the preamp wide open at all times and knock the signal down with the output gain of of a compressor.

This is probably just another one of those things that seperates the men from the boys. I've got a feeling that it probably isn't as desired in the orchestra type world. Maybe not.

Brandon

[dach]

I think driving hard separates the men from the idiots... mostly.

My sytek has the best balance of gain to noise to good sound at around 6-8 oclock so it's usually there.... when used by itself.... plus they don't have much headroom.

My API's really shine when hit hard - like drums, bass or elec gtr, but that being said, how hard do I need to drive an AC gtr or Shaker or female vox? Plus, the sound changes depending on output termination (600/1.2k). Also some compressors/outboard load things and change the sound... and just how hard do i want to hit the comp, much less peak inside a DAW.

I personally try to balance the chain to (usually) have the least amount of noise and give me the clearest representation (no matter how colored that may be) of what I'm micing. When using older limiters in the chain, it changes because they have a sweet spot as well, where there's the best balance of frequencies to gain to noise, etc... everything has to play nice together.

Like I said before, jut get it recorded but you should really spend some time realling getting to know your gear and how it interfaces with other things in the chain....

About once a year, I'll pull out a bunch of mics and instruments and do my own shootout, maybe 10-15 mics, one at a time, placed as good as I can through several positions, through each pre, and then lightly going through each compressor. I just have one great big session that we take notes on and can always refer back to later. After several times, and of course using them all the time, they sound a little different each time, you begin to really learn some things about mics, placement, pre's, compressors and setting each one up.... now it's pretty easy to get a variety of sounds at will... I won't say it's always bulletproof, because I do a huge variety of music, but I pretty much know what I'm going to end up with before I start.... the other option is to getting different sounds would be to buy more and different gear/instruments...

BTW: I've also done the guitar, with several different picks, vox micing left vs right sides, etc... I've actually tried a bunch of stupid things... same with each instrument over time... when I start a project or cut I'll pick a "pallette" of sounds like I would when scoring to picture. If I'm going to be using mandolin, I'll sometimes hit it 6 ways from sunday before I even start so I don't have to think about it much when I actually do it.... hope this makes sense....

[dach]

RB should probably be keeping levels somewhat conservative. Hitting hard or hard enough to saturate tape used to be the thing to do... not in digital though....