I bring this up, to reinforce the coloring. 512’s, a pair of Neve 1073’s, and a pair of S.S.L’s. The best input method I’ve ever heard in a home studio is running Hilo, using any of 3 pair of pre’s. As far as converters are concerned, I agree with original post regarding color.
I agree the best way is to bring the performance in raw. Depending on the vocalist, and the mic your’e using you may have to use compression. You may need to fill in a bit, but at least you’ll start with a viable room. In my opinion start by hanging acoustic panels, at least at the 1st and 2nd reflection points. As an old timer (37 years) in the industry, so many studio owners, have incredible gear, along with incredible bounce back. Once you make peace with your gear – you can move on to things that will make more of a difference in the sound of your final recording and mix, like improving your skill and technique.Īctually John has touched on a subject near and dear to my heart. It is what it is, and it’s not everyone’s (or every situation’s) cup of tea. Just understand that them being clean and transparent is neither good nor bad. They are well made, clean preamps that will do exactly what you need a preamp to do. There is nothing inferior about them either. So, in conclusion – there is nothing wrong with having or using the built in stock preamps in your audio interface. It’s just part of the process for many home studios. Some examples could be different sounding microphones, unique mic placement, and of course plugins that have a lot of harmonic distortion or character.Īgain, nothing wrong with that. I f you, however, record with only the stock preamps in your interface you will have to be intentional to sculpt your sound in different ways. In this situation, the external pres have their own “sound” and the engineer is using that to his advantage. Much like guitar players who want certain pedals or amps to color their guitar’s sound. Creating Vibe On Recording Dayīut many engieneers want to add harmonics, color, and vibe to their recordings by mixing and matching different microphone preamps on the way in.
You see, the mic preamps in your interface are perfectly clean. This is usually not because of a quality issue, but because of a tonal issue. If these built in mic preamps are so good then why do some people bash them on internet forums? Or another question, why do a lot of the engineers I respect and admire use specialty outboard mic pres (like Neve, API, etc)? It’s a thing of beauty! So Why Do People Hate On Built In Pres? In fact – audio engineers from just 30 years ago would kill to have the kind of quiet, clean, and clear preamps and signal chain we now have built into the modern audio interface. They will do a perfectly good job of capturing and retaining all the sonic qualities of your recorded signal, and boosting them to the acceptable level. The preamps we have now-a-days are clean, clear, and have plenty of headroom. Here’s the good news: the mic pres in your audio interface are perfect for the job! Even the bedroom enthusiast wants to capture a quality signal. This is why having quality mic preamps is critical in all recording studios, whether large or small. Thereby keeping the recorded signal as close to what the microphone “heard” in the room as possible. Now of course we want to increase the gain in a way that doesn’t degrade the sound or add any noise or artifacts. The mic pre exists as a way to turn up what your microphone hears. Nothing magical, fancy, or mysterious about it. Primarily they are a functional tool – they exist to take the super quiet signal that a microphone captures and boost (or amplify) it to a more useable level for audio recording and manipulation (line level). The first thing we need to address is the reason we have mic preamps in the first place. What Is The Job Of The Mic Preamp Anyways? I’ve talked about the myths about the built in interface pres before, but today I want to clear up some confusion on what you should (and should not) expect from them. Today let’s talk about the microphone preamps inside your audio interface, and why there’s nothing wrong with them.