Which Preamp?

[Dave Boulden]

Originally Posted by mutilatedlip

This is great info on the preamps for the luddites amongst us (me, basically!).

However, could anyone offer any advice on the recording environment?

Having all this great equipment is brilliant, but if you're recording in an acoustically imperfect room, what practical advice would you suggest to help this?

Assuming you're not going to go the whole hog and get the room professionally treated, start building some DIY Gobos... you'll find some info in another thread... I'll have a look in a mo and update with a link.

Having movable gobos will allow you to alter your room's acoustics to suit what you are recording at the time... whilst not as ideal as treating the room, will definitely give you an improvement.

Other than that, you could probably also arrange some bass trapping without having to make them permanent fixtures also. Frank or Trev will be able to give you some qualified advice on suitable bass trapping implementations.

[UPDATE]

Check these 2 threads for some good info:

Are my monitors any good????
Room Placement of Acoustic Treatment/Bass Traps

I would suggest this particular topic might be best started as a new thread or continued in one of the above threads?

[modz1]

Good call Dave...

[sphelan]

Originally Posted by Dave Boulden

Assuming you're not going to go the whole hog and get the room professionally treated, start building some DIY Gobos... you'll find some info in another thread... I'll have a look in a mo and update with a link.

Having movable gobos will allow you to alter your room's acoustics to suit what you are recording at the time... whilst not as ideal as treating the room, will definitely give you an improvement.

Other than that, you could probably also arrange some bass trapping without having to make them permanent fixtures also. Frank or Trev will be able to give you some qualified advice on suitable bass trapping implementations.

[UPDATE]

Check these 2 threads for some good info:

Are my monitors any good????
Room Placement of Acoustic Treatment/Bass Traps

I would suggest this particular topic might be best started as a new thread or continued in one of the above threads?

I was just about to say that...you beat me to it Dave. +1

[TrevCircleStudios]

The threads linked are good places to start. Keep an eye on the stickies in "recording and mixing". There's a bit in 'drums' already. I'll add a bit on acoustic treatment to the threads on drums and guitars and I'll get something up on vocals when I get a minute!

[Malius]

I don't know if you've covered this at all.

I'm currently using pro tools le, and for preamps I have a focusrite octopre le plugged into a 002 using the optical connection. Therefore I have 12 preamps to use for drums. I also have a Focusrite Voicemaster pro using s/pdif.

I have a pretty good mic selection (including c414, md421, z5600 etc) and I was wondering what my upgrade options were for preamps. As I assume the octopre le isn't the best tool for getting the sound out of those mics.

[terminal3]

Originally Posted by Malius

I have a pretty good mic selection (including c414, md421, z5600 etc) and I was wondering what my upgrade options were for preamps. As I assume the octopre le isn't the best tool for getting the sound out of those mics.

If you need 8 channels, a step up from the Octopre would be the Mackie Onyx 800R.

Mackie ONYX 800R Analog Mic Pre Amp at DV247.COM

Beyond that, the Focusrite ISA828 with the optional ADC card would be another upgrade yet -

ISA 828 (ISA828) at DV247.COM
Focusrite ISA 828 Digital Board Optional 8-Channel at DV247.COM

For lower-cost options, PreSonus makes a few 8 channel boxes that have ADAT, but IMO they're not a huge upgrade over the Focusrite - maybe a bit, but you'd be better to save up for at least the Mackie.

An API A2D (sadly not listed at DV, but around £1,350 out there) would arguably be the best way to expand via S/PDIF. Those pres will be better than both the Mackie & the Focusrite I've mentioned, but of course it's only 2 channels.

As far as lower-cost S/PDIF expansion goes, there's quite a few more options out there, many of them better than your Voicemaster but many not so hot, you get what you pay for in a lot of cases. You could always add something like this:

RME ADI-2 Hi-End 192 kHz/24 Bit 2-channel AD/DA-Co at DV247.COM

or

this: http://www.dv247.com/invt/57220/ - can also function as a standalone AD/DA converter. Coming soon.

... and then use the 2-channel preamp of your choice (DAV BG-1, maybe?)

Others will add suggestions, no doubt, these are the first ones that came to my mind, and not knowing your budget of course I may have gone a bit crazy.. or perhaps not crazy enough..!

[Malius]

The ISA looks pretty good, as I need 8 channels to be able to utilise the full Pro Tools LE, which means using the ADAT lightpipe. I think it might be worth saving up for one of those, as well as seeing what I could get for selling my Octopre LE and Optical card.

Are there any alternatives along the lines of the ISA?

Would it be worth also selling the Voicemaster to get money for the ISA, as I assume the ISA is better quality than the Voicemaster too?

I don't think I really need to use the S/pdif if I have the other inputs available. 12 should be fine. I suppose I could also get another ISA to feed the 8 analogue inputs on the 002, if I had the money .

Are there any other options for that?

[terminal3]

Yeah, I'd dump the Voicemaster in favour of an ISA for sure.

There are a few more options off the top of my head:

RME OctaMic II 8 Channel Premium Mic Preamp at DV247.COM
MOTU 8Pre Firewire Audio Interface with 8 Mic Prea at DV247.COM

... but I don't think either of those is as good as the Mackie, and the ISA is better still, IMO.

And I mentioned PreSonus earlier, here are their offerings:

PreSonus DigiMAX FS 8 Channel Mic Preamp with ADAT at DV247.COM (low-budget)
PreSonus Digimax 96K Eight Channel Mic Preamp with at DV247.COM (higher-budget)

Then there's the much-more-expensive option of getting an 8 channel converter (the Lynx Aurora 8 would be among the first I'd look at for a bang-for-your-bucks ratio - it's about £1600) and then using any 8 channel preamp you want, or an assortment of lower-channel-count mic amps.

[Malius]

So something like the Aurora 8 is a converter that will take any number of preamps up to 8 channels and convert them into data to be transmitted through the lightpipe? I've never thought of using something like that before.

I like focusrite stuff, so I'm definitely thinking the ISA 828, that price range seems doable in a bit of time too, but are there any alternatives worth considering aroudn that price range/style?

[TrevCircleStudios]

If you want a decent upgrade I'd look at a standalone set of converters (lynx aurora/apogee/mytek) and then look at the right pres for the right job (see recording awesome drums thread for some ideas. If you want a budget alternative you could go for a DAV BG8 (which I'd go for before hte ISA but that'd be my subjective choice!)

[Malius]

I'm thinking about getting the ISA 828 for my ADAT option.

Then adding a Neve 8801 and maybe a SSL Alpha Channel to the set up using the analogue ins or SPDIF.

What do you think?

[mutilatedlip]

Originally Posted by TrevCircleStudios

If you want a decent upgrade I'd look at a standalone set of converters (lynx aurora/apogee/mytek) and then look at the right pres for the right job (see recording awesome drums thread for some ideas. If you want a budget alternative you could go for a DAV BG8 (which I'd go for before hte ISA but that'd be my subjective choice!)

I was recently reading somewhere that Dave Gilmour uses DAV pre-amps over anything else on his boat studio.

David Gilmour is a popular guitarist from a band called Pink Floyd.

[terminal3]

Originally Posted by mutilatedlip

I was recently reading somewhere that Dave Gilmour uses DAV pre-amps over anything else on his boat studio.

David Gilmour is a popular guitarist from a band called Pink Floyd.

I'm not sure about "over anything else" but he definitely likes 'em, the BG8 was custom-designed just for him to take on his 'On An Island' tour to do the live recordings with... no-frills, just good sound.

No digital option though, which is where the ISA does have the edge. You'd need a seperate ADC box with the DAV.

Early tests for me here indicate that the ADC options for the ISA are rather good, actually. I'll be posting more thoroughly later (about my ISA One), but as far as the actual mic amp itself goes, it's as much a matter of taste as anything. I WILL be doing something of a very non-scientific comparison between the ISA One and the BG1 which is a favourite of mine here as well. Stay tuned!