mic pre upgrade?

[Charlie_M]

I have a digi002 rack that I got mainly for the purpose of getting some ideas out of my head and into an mp3 or other way to share them. I’m told that to get my voice tracks to the next level I should invest in a better vocal mic preamp than the one that comes with the digidesign hardware (this advice came from a friend, not a salesperson so… no apparent conflict ….). I’m not a singer primarily (primarily a guitarist) but I do want my vocal tracks to sound as good as they can. and my experience with this is quite limited so I’m wondering… how good do I need to go to get better than the stock digidesign mic preamp? And more importantly can I realize a substantial improvement over that without exceeding a few hundred dollars, possibly 500 tops? Used gear is fine for me. I guess tubes are best (presumably for all the reasons that they’re favored for guitar amps?) but not sure how the pricing runs on those or what brands are good. Appreciate any tips on this. Thanks!

[Charlie_M]

For example would this:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/produ...amp?sku=180589

be an upgrade over my digi 002 rack pres? Is this a good one? Reviews on MF are good but ... Thanks!

Charlie

[richiebee]

What kind of studio do you have? What mic?

What makes you think a new mic pre is going to make all the difference to you?

R.

[Charlie_M]

Originally Posted by richiebee

What makes you think a new mic pre is going to make all the difference to you?

R.

Never said I was looking for "all the difference".... can't do that with any single piece.... I guess that's your point? OK cool.

I do trust the judgement of the person who listened to my recording and concluded that an upgrade to the preamp is the next sensible step in the progression to better sound. In other words that person who heard the recording made the assessment that the preamp was a limiting factor currently given where everything else is at (I think she was being overly kind I'm sure my voice was the biggest limiter... but n terms of the gear).

I went ahead and ordered the ART unit linked above. Was hoping to see if people had experience with that unit or another like it. I wouldn't have minded going a bit higher but this is abou the right price point for me at the moment. I guess that's a reasonable stepping stone between the pre's I have today on my digi002 rack and the more expensive units I may eventually acquire a taste for if my pursuit of songwriting and trying to get my ideas out still has me doing my own singing in a few years time.

[Andrew07]

Unless you really really want it, I wouldn't keep the ART. The pre's aren't that bad in the Digi stuff. I have a 002 and I'd say you won't be able to hear enough of an audible difference with a pre under $1000

[Charlie_M]

I guess I'll find out... it's on the way. MF has a pretty good return policy so I'm not out much if I send it back. If I'm unable to hear that it's actually an improvement then back it goes. But I am expecting it to be different tonally due to the tubes on the front end. Not looking for a magic bullet that'll get me out of voice lessons, just looking for the next step up in quality of vocal sound. If I feel this piece achieves that it'll become part of my rig. Thanks.

[brandondrury]

Check out my
Preamp Shootout

I'm curious how well you do.

Remember, these preamps run the gammut from mega budget Mackie pres all the way up to $1,000+ per channel Great River pres.

I could kill this recording now (with cheaper gear) ....which is part of the point.

Never said I was looking for "all the difference".... can't do that with any single piece.... I guess that's your point? OK cool.

That's also a GREAT point!

Here's how I feel about preamps. I own a Vintech 1272 that I paid a grand for and a Trident S20 I paid $650 for. When I got the Trident in, I was curious to see how it sounded. Just for fun I tossed a speaker in my bathroom, ran some drums to it, and put an AT4050 in to pick up the ambience. I recorded the same part with both preamps.

I matched the level on them as well as I possibly could.

Then, I flipped the phase on one track. If the preamps were identical sounding, there would be complete silence.

I could extremely faintly hear just a touch of high end fizz in there.

For sure, one of the preamps had just a hint more of high end grit in there or was just a little faster (which is more likely).

So, I listened and listened and listened to the 2 tracks.

I could never figure out which one was which!!!!

The moral of the story is this:
1) My ears suck.
2) No consumer in the history of mankind will ever even consider giving a damn whether a person uses a Trident S20 or a Vintech 1272 for a room mic on reamped drums.
3) No paying client will ever give a damn either.

This is as far as my "scientific" testing as taken me. I don't waste my time doing tests too often when I could be making noise or making money.

I'm not really making a point about the whole preamp thing. I'm just saying that if a person on this forum ever claims that one of these preamps I own "blows away" the other preamp I own, I will kick them off the forum and stab them in the throat with a pencil because they are flat out con artists with some kind of agenda.

I do want to snag a real deal vintage Neve 1073 (the holy grail of preamps for rock music) which cost about $2500 per channel but include a parametric EQ. My gut says that it too will make the about as much difference in my recordings as the decision to wear tennis shoes or flip flops.

Brandon

[brandondrury]

Preamp Fundamentals I Learned At Michael Wagener's

While we are it, read this one too.

I wrote this while at the Wagener workshop, so I'm sure I was thinking differently than I do right this second.

Brandon

[Charlie_M]

Hey nice article! The point you're making in there about if you get it right the way you know that is that you don't need a lot of post processing is dead on from what little I can tell so far. I mean... when I record my guitar it's right and needs no further doctoring. I record it wet and apply nothing downstream in protools. No need (so far anyway...).

My first shot at vocals was a different matter entirely. Sounded pretty poor without a lot of doctoring. I ended up with compression and expansion and reverb and EQ and stuff in there.. duplicating channels, etc.. and it still never sounded great. Of course a good bit of this is my voice but the tonal characteristics of the channel were just not there and needed a lot of touching up just to become passable. Could be the mic too but I suppose I'll find out. That mic has given me excellent acoustic guitar sounds before which doesn't make it a good vocal mic but it does cause me to suspect that it reproduces reasonably faithfully.

Anyway... yes I think this is all about subtle points.... just like the preamps in a guitar amp and their effect on the amplified tone. Distortion, sag, frequency response, etc.... all that stuff is going to be different from preamp to preamp and it is subtle for sure.

The person who recommended that I step up my vocal preamp quality a bit happens to be running a several k$ massenburg pre and her advice to me was to not even think about that .... my ear won't even pick up on what that thing delivers until I'm much farther down the road on the whole recording thing. So... for now I shouldn't exceed the $300-$500 price point. I'm happy to just make an incremental step in quality which is about all I'm going to be able to appreciate anyway at this stage. Kind of funny in a way... as your ear gets better you start to leave most of the people who you hope will listen to your stuff behind. You get to a point that your incremental improvements will only be noticed by other vocalists and recording people. I guess that's about how it is with guitar too (my primary instrument) so I shouldn't be surprised that it's like this with vocals and recording technique/gear. After puting the guitar down for so many years, as I get back into it now, I feel that it's such a pleasure to have a passion in life and if it costs me a few bucks to pursue that and it becomes a long journey and several sets of mics and preamps to get wherever I'm ultimately going with it.... then that's OK with me. I look forward to trying out my new pre and hope to hear something exciting on the vocals side.

That plus some voice lessons and I'll be on my way!

When I downloaded the preamp shootout I was unable to run it. Will try again later tonight or tomorrow. Thanks!

[brandondrury]

There is one thing I want to mention.

I'm not sure if I buy the "quality" argument. The only objective quality improvment I noticed across the board came with my Mytek converters. It was subtle thing, but one I could hear immediately. I can't mix without the DA converter. Of course, this is all quite subtle too. The bands don't care even when I A/B things.

I think this whole "quality" argument gets shot down quickly when you start to see just how many pres are out there and how many people have different favorites. I find it silly (and also enlightening) that there are these people on various forums violently defending THEIR favorite preamp. You hear people try to justify it by saying that X preamp is rounder or the dreaded **** word.

There are great records made with every preamp known to man, including Behringer. I'm interested in great records. I haven't found a correlation between expensive pres and amazing tone.

On vocals, you can hear different characters in different mics and pres and such. If the mic is wrong, you are screwed. However, once you have the right mic, the different pres do their thing. They are different, but generally speaking, I don't give a damn either way.

The modern vocal sound requires some mixing. Lot's of compression, clever use of effects, and tons of trickery are all part of the modern vocal sound for just about every genre. So if I really have to spend 3 hours getting the damn vocal exactly how I think I want it (another big problem...me), what difference does it make if it the same sound is 100 % yellow or 99% yellow and 1% orange. The damn vocal is going to end up pink anyway.

I'm not saying the you should half ass the front end. However, I'm suggesting that seldom does the home recording world ever get to the point where preamps are significantly effecting the effectiveness of the musc. (Maybe I'm just not an engineer at heart. I'm a music guy).

Brandon