vocal pre amp

alan kelly

hi guys.. recording on pro logic but not happy fully with vocals.. have no problem re recording but wondering would buying a good vocal pre amp improve d sound.. if so has anyone got any ideas of a good 1 around d 300/400 euro price range,,,, cheers in advance guys,,

Eoin Madsen

In general, for 300/400 euros, there is nothing you can buy (new) which is actually any fundamentally different to what you're probably using already. One valveless transformerless pre is really very much the same as another. The part cost for a simple opamp preamp is negligable to begin with.

I picked up a second hand DBX 386 for about 400 dollars on ebay a few years ago, which served me very well at the time, and was noticably nicer than the pres in any of the mixers I had. It was definitely a lot better than the first hand SPL Goldmike I had previously owned, which had sounded pretty much the same as nothing (and yet had serious reliability problems). Last time I powered up the DBX (about a year ago) it was no longer supplying 48V unfortunately.

In a nutshell, a reasonably good preamp will improve your sound, but you'll have a hard time finding a reasonably good preamp for that much money. What kind of microphone are you using? Have you experimented with the distance and are you getting a good inout level? These things can actually improve the sound tremendously.

Eoin Madsen

Also - the various small inexpensive preamps with the valves, Behringer, Art etc., these are all just standard preamps with a plate starved ECC83 in some pointless parallel to the circuit. For all intents and purposes, the valve is just a marketing ploy and only gets exactly enough voltage to light up the heater filament and look pretty.

fitz

alan kelly wrote: »

hi guys.. recording on pro logic but not happy fully with vocals.. have no problem re recording but wondering would buying a good vocal pre amp improve d sound.. if so has anyone got any ideas of a good 1 around d 300/400 euro price range,,,, cheers in advance guys,,

Depends what you're using now, but if you've eliminated mic/room/technique and just aren't happy with your current pre, there's definitely options in that price-range.

http://www.audient.com/audient/product/mico
http://www.dv247.com/invt/49838/

Audient have a good reputation for making quality consoles. It's not gonna give you the character of a more expensive valve or solid state pre, but should certainly offer an improvement over the pres in you (most likely) budget/mid-range interface. Similarly with the FMR RNP:

http://www.dv247.com/invt/12497/

Go an extra one or two hundred and you can start looking at stuff like:

http://www.dv247.com/invt/48366/

or

http://www.dv247.com/invt/20050/

All worth thinking about. I'd avoid the DBX. Sounds a bit anemic in my experience when compared to actual valve pre.

Look at treating your room if you haven't already. Even if it's just hanging a duvet behind you to reduce reflections coming back in, you should see an improvement.

Better off asking over on the Music Production forum, you'll get plenty of feedback there...

alan kelly

hi guys .. firstly cheers 4ur input.. just feel d vocal we recorded hadnt got enough "life" 2it.. using an akg mic.. pretty good mic but feel we are lacking somethin.. have also been told a pre amp with spdif outputs wud b better when transferring to digital..was told something like d m audio tampa cud b worth gettin.. what do u guys think. as u can tell im no genus when it comes 2this stuff.. tryin 2get as much info as i can..

Eoin Madsen

AKG make a lot of mics, and not all are very good for vocal recording. Can you tell me what mic it is? And what kind of recording system you're using at the moment? What's plugging into what etc.?

SPDIF is a digital format. The logic behind using the SPDIF in a preamp to go into your interface instead of sending analogue to it is that the Analog-to-Digital Converter in the preamp might sound better (which actually depends entirely on the devices you're using). If you send analogue signals, they convert to digital in the interface. I'd honestly not worry about it. Much like the inexpensive transistor preamps ("discrete class A" etc, when they're trying to sound upmarket) the ADCs in lower cost units are all essentially similar parts in similar circuits. Using the SPDIF isn't going to make much if any audible improvement.

alan kelly

alright eoin.. cheers 4d advice.. using an akg 420 mic going through a focusright saffire soundcard . using a mac computer with pro logic..lookin 4 something to improve d sound..

Eoin Madsen

A C420 as in the headset mic?

alan kelly

dont know if i got confused but d mic is an akg perception.. apologies

Eoin Madsen

Oh right, different mic to the one I was thinking of. Em... I haven't used any of the Perception series so I'm not really sure tbh. I would have recommended the first thing you do is make sure you're using a large diaphram capacitor mic anyway.

What type of Focusrite Saffire do you have? Is there a box or is it literally just an internal soundcard?

alan kelly

just focusrite saffire.. firewire interface.. also have an m audio firewire 410.. pretty basic

Eoin Madsen

The focusrite saffire pres and a/ds are very reasonable as far as I know. For the given budget, per euro spent on signal path components, I think you'll likely see more sonic improvement by replacing your microphone with a better one.

In any case, ensure that you're tracking with sufficient gain to get the most out of your preamp. It's easier to correct a few clipped peaks in a waveform editor than it is to clean up after getting poor bit depth and a bad signal-to-noise ratio. Also look at the location you're recording in. Unpleasant reflections into the mic from the surfaces in the room can ruin a recording no matter how good your equipment is. 300/400 euros isn't a bad budget to invest in dampening, and if it's needed, I'd put that above replacing the mic.