Microphone Preamp FAQ « Making the Movie

17Jun/090

Microphone Preamp FAQ

M-Audio DMP3 Dual Mic Preamp and Direct Box This is the best article I've ever read on microphone pre-amplifiers, something I've been having trouble wrapping my head around. The big conclusion: focus on technique until you can afford a really good one:

There is a threshold to high quality sound. My goal is to get you over this threshold. Until you are ready to pop for at least that much ($600-1000), don't fret about preamps. Also, don't think that any preamp over $600 is going to do. Really the cutoff point is closer to $1000, there's just a few preamps that have managed to do it under that. RNP. Grace 101. True Systems P-solo. But the real good stuff is between 1-3k. I know that price hurts. It hurts Everyone. If there was a $250 preamp that sounded like a pro preamp, all the professionals would have 10 of them. Like I said, buying a great preamp takes a big leap of faith. I've taken you to the cliff, now you have to jump.

You may realize several times--you are Not Ready for this plunge. OK, we understand. Just work on your audio skills. Huh? Again, position the mic better, use a pop filter, set a better useable level, position the monitors better, improve the vocalist's techniques, fix the room with whatever you have to fix it with, learn how to mix a vocal so it stays above the band, learn compression, applying eq, reverb, sends, returns. In a word, experiment. This approach will give you much more sound quality than replacing one mediocre preamp with another. In a way, you guys that can't afford a great preamp now are blessed.

--How to make sense out of the Microphone Preamp jungle (No attempt made to reproduce all of the bold, italics and bold italics in the original.)

The focus here is on recording music, but I've been experimenting with portable preamps and small microphones for guerrilla sound recording. Who knows, maybe I'll be putting it to use in a #2wkfilm in October.