Hey Nate, to give a more clear answer. I'm not dismissing nice class A pre's, I have a unit of 8 audient pre's that are a class A design but extremely clean. In fact most of what I have are class A, but that's besides the point.
A lot depends on your primary use I suppose. Some of my clean pre's are very transparent but also, you hear people talking about fast pre's versus less fast pre's. By this, often I think people feel that transients come through in more detail on some pre's than others. I would have to say that I agree with this point, some clean pre's really get those transients through in a kind of faster way, where as others, like the Neve stuff I find does not in the same way. however, this may well be one of the reasons that Neve type pre's have become more popular for tracking vocals into digital systems, they round things off and perhaps tame things down sometimes. Now, I worked in a studio with macki onnyx pre's for a while, and its hard to judge objectively with what I have in my own room now without comparing side by side, but I felt there was something sluggish in the sound of the macki's, they got the sound through alright, but things didn't jump out of the speakers through them in that kind of briliant detail. They didn't have a particularly pleasing character, they didn't have an offencive character, and they weren't terrible, but there you go. Personally I do feel that if I was going to have just one high end pre, I'd rather have one really clean detailed one, and then learn to colour it in...then when you want another pre, which is inevitable I suppose, you'll know what you want to look for in terms of colour. A designs do a real nice clean pre called the pacifica as far as I know, but then if you want to use something a little more nevish I think the likes of great river and at a lower budget golden age audio do flavours of 1073 type pre's. someone else would have to chime in there, I'm sure Slau would have encyclopedic knowledge on the subject! To back up my thoughts, I recently did work in the recording studio of our national radio broadcaster here in Ireland, and we were tracking some stuff through some neve modules they had racked from an old console. It was kind of cool and old school to my ears for sure, but really, it wasn't a sound I'd want on everything I do, but sure, I'd love to have it as an option. I guess the units they have would be neve 1081's or something like that, I'm always confused about the generations of neve stuff. It was hard for me to judge noise floor and stuff like that on them as it was a real quick paced session, but I was surprised by the real difference I heard between what I'd been used to tracking through in my studio and these neve units. The tech sheets of some of these pre's only have minor minor differences of noise and harmonic distortion, I mean relatively small differences that you wouldn't think our ears would pick up, but I guess they're measured with simple tones, when you blast complex harmonic content at these things I guess our ears do hear and feel the difference more than a quick comparisan of tech sheets might first suggest. Now if I remember correctly your dealing with hip hop a lot of the time, and something neve like or coloured will probably work very well on the majority of rap vocals and stuff, and it will round things off a bit. I tracked a rap vocal last week in my studio through what is probably my least coloured signal path, using an audio technica 4050, which I would class as being a quite neutral and clean sounding mike, all b it with a slightly forward mid range, but mixing it afterwards, I think it may have been good to work with a more coloured front end going in. That said, a dynamic mike might have gotten me exactly where I wanted to go in this case. But I guess I work with a lot of acoustic drums, piano, acoustic guitars and that kind of thing, so I do like to have the detail starting out most of the time. I find the Slate digital vcc plugs a good means of colouring things in very subtly in the box, and some of the Waves comps and stuff really help with the task. now I haven't used it, but I am very intrigued by a 4 channel unit SSL have that would come in somewhere around $1000 I guess, with their vhd pre in it. It is a circuit they have in their flag ship consoles for the pre's. The pre has an input and out put control, and then a vhd knob that moves through odd and even order harmonic distortion. The more you push the input knob the more it excites the vhd circuit, and you can use the output knob to bring the level back down to an acceptable level into your converters or wherever the output is going. Conversely, I believe you can get rather clean results keeping the input knob at a low level and boosting at the output stage. I'll hopefully be getting one of these into the studio to demo soon once I actually have time to play with it and judge it propperly, but there are a few companies with that kind of design where you can get a variation of colours of harmonic distortion from a pre. There is another high end company, can't remember who that is making a similar multi channel unit with analogue to digital conversion thrown In, but I think that's at least twice the price per channel. So, some more complete thoughts from me, and a few suggestions in there of where you might look to for what you want. HTH Brian. From: Poppa Bear Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 4:30 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Thoughts on Preamps Thanks chuck, I am going to check it out and see if I can get any audio samples, let me know if you have any posted online using the pre amp and if so, what mic you are running it through. Brian, I feel the same way some days, but when I have the ability to use a class A preamp I notice I have to do alot less fiddling in the box to get the sound that I want. ----- Original Message ----- From: CHUCK REICHEL To: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, February 17, 2013 4:13 PM Subject: Re: Thoughts on Preamps Hi Nate, This mic pre is wonderfull! :) I use the wunder pa4 mic preamp in every session! I used the Avalon, 737 for several years and found it to be noisy and overrated. YMMV Check it out. http://www.mercenary.com/wunder-pafour.html Chuck On Feb 17, 2013, at 7:44 PM, Poppa Bear wrote: I am thinking about picking up another preamp, just wondering if anyone is seeing the trend change with pre amps considering all the in the box plugin abilities now. I am thinking either, UA 610, Avalon, 737 or the Neve 1070. Just want some thoughts if anyone has some opinions to spair. As most know a preamp can be a sizable investment for a one trick poney. Nate Kile, Cross Road Recording Studios, specializing in Mixing, Mastering and all your audio needs. www.crossroadrecording.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Pro Tools Accessibility" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
