[BC] Mic preamp needed

[Vernon Kuehn]

On 2/7/2012, Glen Kippel wrote:
> 
>While I have basically been looking at mic pres with a USB output, the PreSonus TubePre looks pretty good, though at about $130 it may be more than you want to spend.  Behringer makes a 12AX7 preamp and a solid-state one which sell for about $45.  ART, M-Audio, Nady, Rolls all make preamps too.  Check out BSW, B&H or your favorite supplier.

Over several years I have developed my little voice recording studio and worked my way through many of the same issues you are describing.  Mine is rather spartan.  I am "semi-famous" over in the PRODUCTION Forum at Radio-Info for coining this phrase at the end of the day:  "Why would I buy a $450 microphone when I have an $89.95 voice!"

We can exercise our voices, we can train them, we can manipulate them, but in the end we cannot go buy a better  voice than what we have, so we go through the exercise that you are doing to make sure our equipment and our studio space are at least a good or better than our voice.  If you can afford it, you can buy better equipment, better acoustic space.  But why leap way beyond your voice and your task.  If audio books are going end up as mp3s in someone's ear buds,  I probably don't need a  $9,000 mic feeding a $4,500 dollar preamp.

If I am a top drawer voice over guy getting premium rates selling to prima donnas at a big money agency,  the big dollar equipment may be noticeable to them, but I suspect the real justification is that whether it sounds better or not,  it convinces the buyer of your product you are serious about what you are doing.  It can simply be "bling" that sways the purchase decision on a national account buying talent.

If you haven't already,  go over to Radio-Info and do some reading in their PRODUCTION forum.  Probably 30 to 40% of their conversation parallels what is going on in this thread.

I have a low-end Audio Technica condenser mic with an ART tube pre-amp and compressor.  Just for ego satisfaction,  I would like to upgrade someday, but the $89.95 voice probably won't be improved much by such a move.

You haven't discussed software.  I use Adobe Audition  (2.0) and when it comes to noise... room noise,  residual noise in the preamp including that which may be higher because I haven't spent as much energy on the impedance match question, and the AIR CONDITIONING noise...   the EFFECTS/RESTORATION/NOISE REDUCTION feature pretty well cures all of that.  I never go for 100% noise reduction on any one pass.  Go for 60 or 70% and make two or three passes.  That is an old habit with me from the early Cool Edit days where NOISE REDUCTION could easily make hamburger out of the audio.

The HVAC in my home studio puts out the ugly 13hz rumble.  I use EFFECTS/FILTERS/SCIENTIFIC FILTERS and set it for high pass everthing above 26 or 39 hz.  Do it twice.  It plays interesting games with DC OFFSET and offset audio peaks.  I usually do this before the noise reduction in the previous paragraph.

I hope to make a road-trip in the next week or so and visit with someone who is trying out the Mojave  201FET.  Wouldn't it be thrilling to find out I actually have a $139 voice after all!    :-)