Hobbyist vs Crazed Hobbyist vs Total Idiot

First off, you've got to figure out what your engineering goals are. Are you just wanting to have a little fun making noise? Are you looking to be the flat-out best engineer you can possibly be? Are you looking to put together a pro facility in which you could record tip-top bands? Are you somewhere in the middle.

I think the biggest reason so many people are mislead on this whole preamp thing comes from not understanding a person's needs. I've been struggling for a while in explaining why I've acquired some fancy pantsy preamps but then rarely recommend this upgrade to anyone here at RecordingReview.

The Music Always Takes Precedence

#1 I'm of the opinion that a person can definitely make exciting music with gear that is “just okay”. Stock interface preamps fall into this category, for example. Even in a not-so-hi-fi state (which high end pres in no way guarantee), exciting music means the recording IS exciting. This was the motivation for this blog: Preamps Don't Matter?

I'd prefer to listen to great music with cheapo preamps over stale, boring crap any day of the week. Everyone with a pulse is this way. If they say differently, avoid them like a gay rapists with big guns.

Good New For: Broke and talented people
Bad News For: Skilled engineers recording uninspired noise, anyone untalented

Squeezing That Last Drop

#2 Dumb metaphor time: If cash is no object, you get the lightest gear possible for 10x the price when climbing Everest because too many people have died trying and that last 100 ft is harder than it looks.

Even the best engineers are going to have a hard time with that “last 100ft”....the thing that separates the ultra men from the men without the fancy preamps. Of course, #1 is still applies here.

Good News For: Skilled engineers with deep pockets who want to be ultra-skilled engineers, hobbyists who aren't attempting to “climb Everest” and therefor don't need idiot-gadgetry anyway
Bad News For: Broke people climbing Everest

No Bailouts

#3 There are a billion places a person can screw up a recording (with or without the high end preamps). Fancy pres don't bail you out of bad sounding situations....ever!

Good News For: People who've really got their shit together......which is basically no one
Bad News For: Anyone trying to make a butt kicking recording

What's Wrong With Cheapo Pres?

#4 The two main problems with cheapo pres is they sound “blurry”....kinda like a VCR tape where stuff is kind of smudged/smeared or they take on the megaphone effect a bit. How much? Not THAT much, but it's certainly something no one I know would prefer.

You can clearly hear what I'm talking about in The Interrogator Sessions in Killer Home Recording. Once your ears are acclimated, it doesn't take much work to hear how the cheapo pres compare to the high end pres. There's never a time when the cheapo pre would win. The top notch pres always have this “extra excitement” in them while the cheapo pres seem more “sluggish”.

I divide the preamp thing into three categories: cheapo, adequate, and fancy. Once you get passed the cheapo stuff, the adequate pres do the job just fine. They may not add anything interesting, but they don't murk up anything and they don't add the megaphone effect. The True Systems pres fall into this category, among others. I thought the pres in the Yamaha MR816 weren't TOO far from being adequate, but they didn't quite make it. I've rumors that the pres on the RME Fireface 800 may be playing not too far from this ballpark. So when you read reviews about these upper-range interfaces sounding “amazing”, they really just sound “almost adequate” if we take the Total Idiot stance from above.

Adequate preamps do a fine job and could be used on everything without any real issues.

The special pres do a certain something extra. This “extra” thing could be good or bad depending on what you are going for (we'll get into that) and this is where knowing exactly what each preamp is ideal for comes into play. Certain special pres push you into a corner a little bit.

#5 Not all fancy mic preamps are ideal for use on everything. Big, dark sounding preamps can cause big problem when using them on everything. Too many “big” sources makes mixing a challenge. It's best to use the big sounding pres sparingly on the bigger stuff and use the tighter pres for everything else.

When I started out with my Vintech 1272 on the very first recording I had ever done (I was told I absolutely NEEDED it!....asshole!) Anyhow, that preamp is more on the bigger/thicker side of the fence. It doesn't have the hi-fi sparkle that many pres do, but it does have a the Neve-style harmonic in the upper mids. All Neve-type pres have this and it's a dead giveaway in shootouts. The Vintech does not have the hi-fi Neve thing that the Great River Neve-style pres have. It's more of a darker sound.

This is not a preamp I would recommend starting with. Even though I do pull it out for certain things some of the time. The Vintech 1272 can be great on vocals that you don't need to be ultra bright (particularly with an SM7b among others) but want to sound big. The lack of sparkle paints the 1272 into a corner that's only useful at certain times. It kind of reminds me of when mom puts the special tablecloth on at Christmas. It's only great once a year.

For what it's worth, the pres in the Yamaha MR816 don't have near the sparkle of a Manley TNT solid state channel, Martech, or Great River either, but the more neutral approach to their design makes them more usable across the board. There's something impractical about certain high end pres as a daily driver. A person would be better off with a new Ford Focus than a 500Hp Hemi Cuda if they only had one car. For a person who only has single-car garage, there are powerhouse BMWs and Mercedes that can do the daily driver thing and can do it with super high performance. This is where the high end sparkly preamps mentioned above come in.

In short, spending big bucks on some random pre is not the solution and could actually get you into a place that is worse than decent interface pres.

Good News For: People with a wide variety of pres who know how and when to use them, People who have a single faster/tighter preamp they use on all overdubs
Bad News For: Guys overdubbing exclusively with one fancy preamp that may not be ideal for across the board use

My Recommendations

Hobbyists – If you are a guy just having fun, don't buy a fancy preamp. If you want your recordings to sound good but have limited time and aren't going to get upset if your productions don't blow away the big boy bands, just have fun and don't let anyone convince you need to make a huge investment.

Crazed Hobbyists – If you do this for fun, but have a few bucks to blow, have a little fun with adequate preamps first. You may not need a big selection and your needs will depend on if you are entirely doing overdubs or if you are recording multiple tracks at once. However, in this world, I recommend preamps on the sparkly side of the fence with tight low mids. You saw a few examples above. The True Systems stuff definitely gets the job done in this realm, but if you want to go all out the solid state Manley TNT channel is my go-to preamp for sparkly stuff. The Great River gear works really well. I definitely wouldn't go with something not-so-tight in the low mids for my single pre again. Those were some long years!

Total Idiots – If you are going for the top and climbing Everest, I'll tell you what I've done. I just bought a Toft ATB32. It supposedly has okay pres to hold me over when I run out of fancy stuff. I picked up an API 3124, a Wunder PaFour, and a Focusrite ISA 428. I'm keeping my Manley TNT and most likely selling everything I've had previously. (I haven't decided about my Chameleon 7602s yet.)

I expect the API to end up on close mics on drums and probably most things I'm overdubbing. It doesn't have a super sparkly top end and it's quite colored. It'll smooth out shrill stuff. My Manley TNT solid state is definitely sparkly and doesn't smooth out anything. The X factors here are the PaFour and ISA 428. I'll have to report back when I've put them to the test, but the Wunder should do more of the Neve thing with the extra harmonic in the upper midrange. The ISA should be sparkly like the Manley TNT SS, probably a little less colored, maybe a little faster. I'm speculating.

For what it's worth, there are only a few qualities that are that important. Why a person needs 22 different models of preamps is beyond me.

• Meaty Transients
• Sparkly preamp with tight low mids (for brighter vocals, acoustic guitars)
• Tamed Upper Mids, Harmonic Content (for most vocals, electric guitars)

You can make it much more complicated if you want to, but I don't see the reason. I really do think the old view of just using a console worked on most the cds in my collection. I've leave the optional hair/atom-splitting up to you. I've got noise to make.

The tighter, more focused pres are where it is at for day to day tracking. There are times when you want the bigger, darker, and less-focused sound but the most part I'm not into it. In the tighter/focused category you have all kinds of options to choose from and various attributes that make them more or less ideal.

Here's a 1992 Chicago Bulls basketball analogy that I think sums it up. Michael Jordan is API. BJ Armstrong is Great River. We are recording my “sparkly” acoustic guitars again. (Work with me, I know this sounds, and is, stupid.) BJ Armstrong is the point guard and so it's his job to bring the ball up the court. Is it going to really be the end of the world if Michael Jordan has to handle the ball? Probably not. Basically, we get an extra point in the sparkly department by selecting the Great River. We don't necessarily lose anything with the API. Your girlfriend probably won't notice and the bass player definitely will not notice.

Then again, when all this stuff aligns and you select the pres that give you what you want at various times (and combine that skill with an equal amount of across-the-board engineering skill) the band will definitely notice.

Conclusion

Broke home recorders don't have to worry too much unless their aim is absolute robo recordings. A hobbyist will usually have goals that are more modest than the guy engineering the next INSERT BIG BAND's album. Some hobbyists are dealing with limitations in music, musicians, instruments, room, and engineering ability that hold them back and in any of those situations, the fancy preamp thing is unnecessary.

For the crazed hobbyist, If the wrong pre is used throughout a recording, a person can have their work cut out for them in mixing. Because of this, I highly recommend tighter, more focused pres to be used overall and then, in time, adding a big sounding pre for special situations (vocals, kick, etc).

For the guys going for the absolute echelon of ultra recordings, there are specialized tasks for various pres than can make life a little more fun. Understanding when to use what is part of the skill of a great engineer. While there have certainly been numerous recordings made with a console only, and great music music will always come through, most people agree that there are sound quality benefits to specializing.

The Great River MEQ-1NV it a single channel preamp with a 4 band parametric EQ. You can tell the second you take it out of the box that there is some serious stuff happening here just by looking through the ventilated top. We are dealing with a beast.

The MEQ-1NV has the usual required features I'd expect from a high end preamp:
Phantom power
Hi-Z Input
2 different input impedances
bla bla bla

Just go to the Great River website and get all that type of info.

Flexibility
The impedance button was a huge help any time I wanted to bring out a bit more upper midrange / top end on a track as it allows a selection between 300 ohms and 1,200 ohms. The effects of impedance switch vary depending on the output impedance of the microphone but overall I was very happy with this option. If a tone was a bit too aggressive, switching to the lower impedance helped solved the problem. If I wanted more upper midrange cut, the higher impedance often delivered it.

The loading button was quite a bit more subtle and really has more with the output impedance of the unit (which isn't that big of deal to most of us home recording types.). The only time I really noticed a clear difference with it was on one bass track. The low end seemed to tighten up a bit. I may be crazy.

Hi-Z Input
It's not secret that I'm a big fan of reamping these days. I record quite a few of my electric guitar tracks DI and then run them back through an amp. There is something I really like about this Hi-Z input. Great River runs the Hi-Z input through an input transformer. Apparently this isn't all that common. All I know is I like it. The top end just sounds sweeter to my ears. Very cool!

I had a session using DI electric guitar the day after I sent back the MEQ-1NV and I have to say that it was disappointing going back to the M-Audio Octane Hi-Z input.

Pushing The Preamp
Just as I like transformers, the only thing better is pushing a transformer harder. I like harmonic content. That's why I chose the Distressor EL-8X. I think there are serious benefits to squeezing a little extra juice out of my gear. That's why most of us like tube microphones so much. I love the fact that the MEQ-1NV has separate input and output metering. This is fairly unique for a preamp. Why did they do that? So retards like me and cram in more signal than I probably should, get a little bit of saturation going, and then back off the output gain. It's subtle, but it's cool.

Of course, if a person REALLY wanted to drive under the speed limit, the opposite is true. You could crank up the output gain all the way up to +10dB and then back off on the input gain. I found myself doing that 0% of the time, but it certainly gave slightly different results.

The Sound
When conducting the Interrogations for Killer Home Recording each and every time I switched from X preamp to the Great River MEQ-1NV I immediately heard sweet aggression in the upper midrange and high end. I think many of you would call this “clarity without a hint of harshness”. I don't use that “c” word often, but I think it fits in this case. Maybe “alive” is a better adjective. One thing I liked about the Great River MEQ-1NV was it performed extremely well on every source. I had my preferences for this instrument and my preferences for that instrument, but the Great River was consistently towards the top on all of them.

The Great River MEQ-1NV has a certain character to it. It sounds “richer” in the upper midrange and high end than all the other preamps in the shootout. I guess a person could say the Great River preamp is brighter than the others, but I don't think “brighter” is the right word here. It implies some kind of frequency response kind of thing. I don't think this is it, necessarily. It sounds more like a harmonic content thing or something. I'm not sure how to describe it necessarily, but it's simply something you can't EQ into a track if you didn't have it in the first place. It has a way of tucking the boxy 400Hz junk a bit too which I consider to be a necessity for the kind of work I do.

The combination of a “sweet” top end and a way of keeping 400Hz a little more tucked than other preamps ends up sounding like what I can only describe in one single word. EXCITING!

More Than Rock Music
I hear a lot of talk about the aggressive Neve-style sound being ideal for rock music. I can't deny that, but I recorded a number of acoustic songs with the Great River MEQ-1NV and I'm very, very happy with it. So I think the Great River is an outstanding preamp for just about any source and any kind of music.

The EQ
I have to admit that I have never used a serious hardware EQ before. I've used EQ plugins each and every day since I opened this Pandora's box of recording back in 2001, but I've never got to play with the real deal analog EQ.

The long story short is I feel I need - or at least could greatly benefit from - a kick ass hardware EQ like this. I found that when I heard something in tracking I didn't like or I heard something I did like and I wanted to enhance it, it was awesome solving that problem before it even started. I loved the convenience of never having to deal with that issue again. My tracks were practically finished before I even started mixing. I really liked that.

I found that MEQ-1NV was not my first choice for precise surgery. I don't think it was meant to be. One one acoustic guitar track, there was this “thingy” that kept leaping out at 234Hz. I know it was 234Hz, not because I can hear that well, but because I highlighted that one single note in Cubase and ran a spectrum analysis on it. Something was spiking in that region and I had no idea why. The MEQ-1NV is not the kind of EQ where you can dial in to 234Hz, use a Q of 10,000 and make a cut that removes 234Hz but leaves 230Hz and 238Hz in tact.

The MEQ-1NV, however is the kind of preamp that makes stuff simply sound better. I looked at it more as a space-aged tone control than as problem solver, necessarily.

MEQ-1NV vs Oxford EQ On Distorted Guitar
I played with the MEQ-1NV for some time on an electric guitar. I have to admit that no angels came down from heaven when I was twisting knobs on the EQ. I didn't even hear the movie-style scary choir sound. However, there was something that felt better that I can't really explain. I did my best to knock out the frequencies that were bothering me on these high gain guitars. (Note: I could have lived with these guitars with zero EQ!) I was happy with what I had going into my converter.

Then I recorded the tracks again (via reamping) with no EQ. The plan was to take 8 seconds, use the Oxford EQ to match the tone and write the MEQ-1NV off as overpriced hunk of iron and transistors. Then something happened.

8 seconds later, I wasn't able to match the tone.

6 seconds later, the same thing. I kept thinking “hmmm. Why can't I match these?”.

I kept on and kept on and kept on. After 30 minutes I finally threw my hands in the air. Something was going on in this damn Great River EQ that I simply could not match with a respected plugin.

The guitar track with the Great River had more 3D depth, sounded smoother, and yet still sounded brighter and more aggressive at the same time. With the Oxford, the end result was flatter, seemed to have less harmonic content, and when I did add top end it just sorta brought out the fizz. The Great River MEQ-1NV sounded exciting in comparison.

It's clear I need a hardware EQ this good. Anyone need an inexperienced bank robber?

Does a Great River MEQ-1NV Belong In a Bedroom Studio?
The Great River is good as high end gear gets. It's a bold sound. It doesn't take long to hear what makes this thing so expensive. It SOUNDS expensive! With that said, it's not going to make up for other weak links in the chain. The preamp is just one of many links in the chain. This is a professional piece of gear and it requires an engineer with a professional-like attention to detail to make full use of it.

Does it belong in a home recording studio? If you have some experience under your belt, and your kids have more than enough cash in their college funds to experiment with their sexuality AND still get good grades, I think the Great River can make life much easier. If you haven't lossed your hair dealing with idiots (some of you refer to them as “musicians” there may be bigger fish you need to fry).

Conclusion
The Great River MEQ-1NV is a winner. It really is a high end piece of gear that delivers high end results. It's the kind of thing that is just as necessary on a folk song as it is on a death metal song. You can simply hear more excitement in the tracks without ever sounding harsh or fizzy.

It's the kind of thing that if home recording is more than a hobby, you can certainly gain something extra with high end preamps. Is it an instant and automatic Engineering Grammy? Definitely not. You still got to work hard to get the sounds you are after, but I found that doing just that was easier with a preamp the caliber of the Great River MEQ-1NV.

I just need to figure out where I can steal the $,$$$ to buy it!

After over 30 days of nothing but shootouts, I have to say that it's nice to be back in audio recording action again. I can now see why the bad guy in Good Morning Vietnam was ticked when he got sent back to Guam. There is no action in Guam and there is no action in shootouts either. As fun as it may seem to have access to a thunderous array of studio recording equipment, I must admit that it becomes more a mindless, ditch digging experience of running through the motion take after take only the change in mics or preamps breaking up the monotony. The music is secondary with shootouts. Not only does this flaw inherently flaw the shootouts, it also takes all the fun out of it.

With that said, I learned a ton about recording equipment after conducting all these damn shootouts and now I have to decide what the hell I want to do with my own gear. At the moment I have a $14,000+ credit card bill so it looks like I'm going to be having an Ebay day very soon!

I'm always weighing the cost/reward ratios of all this gear. Should I shell out the $2,800 for a Great River MEQ-1NV (top notch preamp and EQ) or could I get by with an M-Audio Octane and maybe an Oxford EQ (maybe go-to EQ these days). It's a complicated decision. It guess it boils down to which is going to have a more adverse effect on me personally....the lack of sonic benefits of the Great River or a lack of $2,800. I really need a new recording computer....hmmm.

As painful as it is to leave the safety of my recording music status, I now need to venture back into equipment shootout land and discuss all the gear reviews and zillions of soundclips I have coming up.

The Recording Equipment

Microphones

• Peluso 251
• Cascade Fathead II
• Behringer C3
• Karma K6
• MXL V63M
• Royer R121
• Gefell M930
• Oktava MK219
• Groove Tubes AM51
• Groove Tubes GT57
• Karma K35
• AKG 414
• SM57
• Audix I5
• AT4050
• Shure SM27
• AT4040
• AT2020
• M-Audio Nova
• AT4033
• Studio Projects B3
• Shure SM7b
• Karma KP-80
• Neumann M147
• Peluso 47
• Karma K10

Preamps

• Martech MSS-10
• Manley TNT
• Truesystems P-Solo
• Great River MEQ-1NV
• Presonus ADL600
• Trident S20
• Vintech 1272
• Presonus Studio Channel
• RNP
• Firestudio
• Presonus Digimax D8
• M-Audio Octane

I guess that's all for now. I just wanted to say how great is feels to be recording music again and not just conducting pseudo-science experiments and explain what I have coming up.

Brandon