A 2000$+ pre amp to record or not????

WaveLab
1

this question really worries me. When we use many vst instruments we get good sounds many has been created with super preamp btw… i got good mikes akg414 neumann etc fine but I dont use a bigpreamp (just a steinberg interface) . When I see preamp like Avalon for 2500$ ( which is a price of a good computer today) i wonder do I really need this??? Id like to be sure before i invest such an amount… Is it really gonna be a better result for voices and guitard ( acoustic as much as electric) percussion etc? ( i dont record drum in my studio i go somewhere else) does it worth 2500$ ??? Coz today with the great plug ins we got on the market waves etc and eq we can adjust the sound after…

What do you think I should do , buy an avalon for 2500$ or work harder on my mix with plug ins etc???

Thanks

2

Just to chime in with my opinion…

For a professional for-profit studio then I would say yes. But…

For a guy like myself who uses Cubase in a not-for-profit home studio environment VSTs are fine. Especially if you are recording your drums live in a different studio. My most expensive piece of musical equipment is my Marshall JVM210C guitar amp. It is a great sounding amp when playing live but… 95% of the time I do not use it when recording with Cubase. There is just is no need. Record through CB, add a VST effect and voila… a nice sounding guitar track that can be changed (soundwise) with the push of a button.

Your AKG414 is a great mic. And the available VST effects are getting better and better. As they say… close enough for rock and roll.

Have fun deciding :wink:

Regards :sunglasses:

3

I can´t speak for you, but personally I´d not benefit from a pre-amp that expensive.
I doubt I could hear much of a difference with my Onyx preamps and for that money I could buy many other things that would probably enhance my sound much more than a preamp.
(I was going to mention a guitar amp, but Prock just killed my wishlist :stuck_out_tongue:)

4

Depending on which Steinberg interface you have, my UR824 preamps sound great!

5

No need to spend 2000.- on a preamp, something like the Avalon 737 does not really have a great preamp.
It has a great combination of tools that makes it desirable.
The biggest impact a high end preamp has on sound would be with an dynamic mic. Like a shure sm7b or a passive ribbon mic.
Mostly because of the use of input tranny’s and +70dB of gain.
Something like the BAE 1073dmp or the Daking mic pre one, would get you in high end territory.

6

I don’t think I could ever live without a great preamp and compressor for my outboard. Maybe I’m old, but I find it a necessity to have at least one good preamp and one good compressor for tracking vocals. I have a lot more than that, but that would be on my Desert Island.

7

I’ll second the Daking Mic Pre One. It is a great sounding Pro Preamp for very little money. I don’t own one but have had the pleasure of using one often. Skip the Avalon stuff imo. For $2500.00 I’d be looking at the API Channel Strip, or for a little less the Manely Core.

8

What he ^ said…

9

If a song’s is really good - people will like/buy it regardless of what preamp it was tracked through. Most people couldn’t care less about sound quality beyond a certain level of acceptability. Gear snobs and tech heads care, but it really doesn’t matter that much, same goes for mics. As someone else has mentioned the only reason for bespoke preamps is extra gain for quiet sources.

10

Hi…as per my knowledge if you are recording your drums live in a different studio. My most expensive piece of musical equipment is my Marshall JVM210C guitar amp. It is a great sounding amp when playing live but… 95% of the time I do not use it when recording with Cubase. There is just is no need. Record through CB, add a VST effect and voila… a nice sounding guitar track that can be changed (soundwise) with the push of a button.

11

To not care about the sound means that someone must have an inkling of where the sound actually comes from. How a recording is made and what was used to record it. Most people can’t conceive the recording process. Listeners that don’t play but only listen. On that note I agree that the composition speaks more than the recording, however if you look at some of the most revered recordings of all time, they’re recorded pretty damn well. And they are recorded with some pretty damn good equipment.

One last thing to note is the operator. And unskilled operator can use the best equipment and it will still sound like crap. A veteran can take the crappiest gear and make magic with it.

No, gear isn’t the end-all-be-all of anything and it isn’t snobbery that says you need a million-dollar piece of equipment to sound good. It is just that those like me, who have been engineering for over 25 years, have grown accustomed to how wonderful it is to work with good sounding gear high quality recording equipment after spending our early years with less capable equipment…

12

Well said!

No, gear isn’t the end-all-be-all of anything and it isn’t snobbery that says you need a million-dollar piece of equipment to sound good. It is just that those like me, who have been engineering for over 25 years, have grown accustomed to how wonderful it is to work with good sounding gear high quality recording equipment after spending our early years with less capable equipment.

Yes, however gear has improved so dramatically in the last few years that the difference between say, an esoteric preamp and my trusty Yamaha D-pre is almost a matter of subjective choice rather than a huge (or even noticable) quality boost.

13

To each his own. :sunglasses:

I had a focusrite Sapphire and octopre in a remote recording rig for a year. Yeah, it sounded good, but when I return to the studio, the difference it’s a lot greater than what you’re describing. I remember when I first used the unit. I was shocked at how good it sounded, much like how you describe your dpre. I would be happy with them if that was the only thing I had, and if I didn’t run a production house.

14

But my point still stands, take a record that has become a million dollar hit, wind back the clock, give the same engineers the same good room, a copy of Cubase, a consumer sound card and a £100 Chinese mic (or mics) and the recording will be (to 99.9% of people) just as good as the (never made!) original. Modern kit is simply good enough - the difference between a £5,000 pre-amp and a £100 pre-amp is not that great, the biggest benefit of being in a studio these days is the space itself - for under a grand you can have a home studio which will blow away anything the Beatles ever had to record with (sonically) but you won’t have the great sounding rooms. As for older stuff, a lot of reggae for instance was badly recorded in rubbish studios and sold by the million because the songs were so good.

15

There was a lot of other things going on back then. Music was heavily promoted for sales, so I don’t think it is a fair comparison. But I do get what you are saying.

I agree that the space in which you record is as important as the gear that you use to record. I’ve spent the past 15 years messing around with the tuning of my spaces. (1200 SQ ft, 3 recording studio rooms all tuned different and a control room) That is so important to me and my work.

Still, I will not follow you down the road that the difference in a “£5,000 pre-amp and a £100 pre-amp is not that great”. I think anything at $2000-2500 is the top end of what you would ever need. Anything higher you will not gain much. $1000-1500 for a channel or 2 is a sweet spot… Usually preamps in this range will come with tools such as bass roll off, pads, etc. and an input and output gain pot Useful tools for working with sources.

I’m trying to keep this all on topic…

PeppaPig,

I don’t know your background, what type of work you do, or the capacity of your skill set. If you are a musician that records themselves, a really nice preamp may not make any sense. Also, if your work has low track counts, you may never experience the additive sonics really good gear brings to the table. For me, typical 5 piece band generates 35-40 recorded tracks, meaning 35-40 mics through 35-40 preamps into cubase for the baseline mix arrangement. Typical track counts for these projects are 2-3 times the recorded track count number. When I moved from a digital recording board to boutique preamps and comps and eqs, the difference was startling. The cost was too.

In your signature you list a

AKG C1000S, Rode NT2A, SE2200A and 1950s Ferrograph Series 5 reel to reel (great for adding warmth to vocals!)

Did you ever think that the reason you are using Ferrograph to warm up your vocals was because you are compensating for the brightness of your condensers? And that it is the limitation of the components and the cost of them?

You talked about these old recordings being made with inferior equipment. Perhaps to a degree in lack of precision of manufacturing. With technical limitations of multi-tracking, a computer and DAC would have been appreciated then, but back to microphones… I highly doubt they would have taken a NT2 over a U47. Speaking of which, do a google search for “u47 capsule” and just view prices. That is for one component of the microphone. Fit that with a fet or tube stage to complete a diy microphone build and you are climbing higher. My point to this comparison is some things cost money. They just do. Even with all the different people making these and other quality capsules, none of them are inexpensive because it just isn’t possible.

I hope this doesn’t come off as being harsh or anything. I am wishing this info aids and engages people without alienating them.

16

Amy Winehouse used a SE2200A for most of Back To Black - does anyone complain about the vocal quality of that album? Quite the opposite - would the album have been appreciably better with a £2500 microphone? I doubt it. Yes I sometimes dump vocals to tape to warm them, it’s the harmonics I’m after - not to tame the highs - although as my number of saturation VSTs has increased I don’t feel the need to do so that much any more as I usually find what I need in the box, 95 out of a 100 radio play vocal tracks have heavy saturation applied to them, so they have £10,000 worth of hardware to track the vocal (mic+single channel of pre-amp) and then destroy the recording because it sounds “too good”; In the old days each layer of the recording/production process added noise and distortion, the best possible original recording was required to keep some fidelity, now there’s virtually no noise floor or further degradation from bouncing tracks and through reproduction, therefore you’re not fighting a losing battle trying to maintain the quality of the recording through the production chain. so my cheap microphone - just like your expensive U47 is not only good enough - but too good and needs “dirting-up” before it’s pleasing to the human ear.

The Rode is too bright for vocals but that’s because I only have small spaces to record in - it sounds great in a proper studio - but it can be sorted with EQ, I rather be taking too much of a particular frequency away rather than not having it in the first place!

Yes you do sometimes need a more versatile pre-amp I have a GA PRE-73 DLX, it has input/output gain and a 0/-7/-14/-21/-28db pad for driving the output transformer harder and 5 level HPF. The main reason for buying it was actually to make more use of my ribbon mic as it was only useful for guitars as levels were too low on vocals - other than that the UR44 pre’s sound fantastic.

My projects tend to be around 40-50 tracks and I find myself DI’ing guitars more and more these days because the quality of modern amp simulations is staggering so I’m not committing the sound of the track at the recording stage.
15 yeas ago I would rather cut my wrists than DI a guitar - times have changed, you simply couldn’t tell my DI’d guitar tracks are not recorded the old fashioned way - they sound excellent.