Low Budget Mic Pre Suggestions Requested

[hazineju]

Hi Everyone. Frodo, who is mixing and mastering some of my tunes for me, has convinced me that my Art Tube MP Studio that i use for vocals isn't cutting it and that i need to upgrade. problem is i don't have much of a budget to upgrade. i was enviously reading Jeff Greenleaf's post about a $1000 preamp budget. Mine is $200 max. Frodo has already suggested a couple, can anyone offer opinions on these or others under $200? I need it to have a USB connection and would prefer it to be light/portable. Tascam US 122Lhttp://www.zzounds.com/productreview--TASUS122LM-Audio Mobile Prehttp://www.zzounds.com/item--MDOMOBILEPRE E-MU 0202http://www.zzounds.com/item--EMU0202

[hazineju]

Thanks Anne, i am a sucker for a great deal but portable is pretty important right now. thanks for the info about the 122. i am trying to eliminate as much hissing/room noise as possible, so it's good to know that was an issue for you. i'll see if i can find how the 122L compares to the 122. BTW i am from Albuquerque myself!

[jh]

IMHO Wait until you can afford something "way better", trust me, you save in the long run.Apogee Duet would be perfect, but it doesn´t have USB...Quote:My question is, if you've got a $750 mic and very good cables, how much improvement do you get with a comparable preamp?It depends, but the improvement can be substantial. Sometimes you can´t believe it´s the same mic - JH

[jh]

Quote:a first generation Joe Meek pre-amp compressor that I bought over 10 yrs. ago That was EXACTLY what I meant by "you save in the long run". - JH

[ernstinen]

This may be a little OT, but I own a Soundcraft 16-channel analog board that I bought in, oh, 1948. Actually, it's about 25 years old, and when I bought it new it was $5000! That's because it was the best board on the market, and had premium mic preamps. --- I still use it when I record with mics, and run all my sample players through it as well (I make one analog pass through the Soundcraft into a Empirical Labs Fatso, then into Pro Tools when I mix).If you have room in your studio for a board that has fantastic mic preamps, I'll bet you could find one on eBay for about a tenth of what I paid for it. Best investment I ever made. --- Plus, with 16 mic preamps, you can record a whole band with it if you want to --- A couple of years ago, I was thinking of replacing it with a Mackie. I went to Guitar Center, and was looking at boards. The salesman came up to me and I told him I had heard good things about Mackies, but loved my Soundcraft. He said "You have an old Soundcraft!???? --- KEEP IT! --- It's much better than a Mackie!" I was shocked, I tell ya, shocked! that a salesman would tell the truth and let me walk away like that! Ern

[gongchime]

I like what I have. Perhaps my biggest limitation is that I don't know that much about gear. These days, I don't use the BR1180 for recording purposes. Just the mic preamp. I have Cubasis with Wave Lab Lite and Patch Mix DSP as well as Finale 2006. I made all my own samples on those recordings with just a SM57 close miked. Mostly, it would be the right choice anyway. Hitting metal with a bone hammer needs a mic like that. Some things were sequenced and some weren't. I recently got the Audio Technica 4050 mic, a very short gold mogami cable and AKG K271 headphones on my last trip to Seoul Korea. None of which I've used yet. My Korean digital music professor gave me a CD of software when I was studying for my masters degree in music composition. Among other things it came with Cubase SX3 and the full version of Wave Lab. I don't use the former. I like the latter very much because it allows me to change pitch, stretch the length, change the gain etc... I seem to remember Cubasis coming with a load of guitar, bass, drum and synth samples. I can't find them now. There's just a few different kinds of bass and guitar vst instruments. Not so many that are useful for what I'd like to do now except one excellent bass guitar sound. There's never any good clean electric guitar samples or saxaphone samples anyway. It's just the nature of sequencing. Some good free samples of standard guitar/amp configurations, bass configurations, good saxophones etc... would be nice to pick through though. But I suspect I'll have to record the guitar the old fashioned way...by actually playing it. Maybe I even still remember how.

[hazineju]

Wow, thanks for all the responses. i've been busily looking up all your suggestions and really appreciate it. you've given me lots to think about. gongchime, thanks for asking all those questions, i was confused about it too. Mark, Mojo, and Nick, i have to say that i thought all i needed was a mic pre. but it turns out i need a sound card/interface with a digital connection as well as a pre-amp. i was plugging the mic into the art, the art into the tascam, and the tascam's line out directly into the built in jack on my mac. i was using a Rode NT1-A condenser in an untreated room, and there was lots of hissing covering up the vocal, as well as some muddiness in the lower range. so i switched to a beta 58 (if bjork uses it, so can i!) and tried the pre and the tascam individually. -no distortion, but mud on the pre-amp and some hiss on the tascam (though much less than with the condenser). one way frodo put it is, "the sound is being degraded." so i guess everything between the mic and the computer is the issue- the whole sound card, interface, pre-amp, a/d conversion thing is the lacking (or non-existent!) factor in my recording. i'm looking at all the models you all mentioned, and i've also had a few more outside suggestions that i thought i would run by you recording buffs to see if you knew anything about, too:Line 6 Toneport UX2http://www.zzounds.com/item--LINTPUX2 and E-Mu Tracker Prehttp://www.zzounds.com/item--EMUTRCK

[hazineju]

Very good point, Steve and Mazz. Anyone know any engineers here in st lucia? Actually i know i was having issues with the levels, because that is the first thing that frodo went over with me. of course he is in norway and i'm in st lucia but thru email he described to me how to set the gain levels on the pre to match up with the levels showing in the computer. he suggested to watch the meter and don't let it get much hotter than -10db in the ART. to be honest i didn't even really know what "gain staging" was 2 weeks ago. i had been recording with the levels way too high on the computer in comparison to the pre. so i'm pretty sure i got them to a good and balanced place when i sent him the vocals used with the dynamic. and at that point i DID try going from the ART straight to the built in jack in the computer but didn't like the sound at all. Mazz, you also confirmed what frodo has told me, that Aug 11, 2008, 10:22am, mazz wrote:Even an inexpensive interface like the ones you are considering will provide much better conversion to the computer. Those built-in jacks are OK for web conferencing and voice dictation but for any music work, you need a better interface.Mazzso right now i'm going back to researching the models, and any more tips and suggestions are appreciated!

[sgs4u]

Aug 11, 2008, 11:17am, hazineju wrote:Very good point, Steve and Mazz. Anyone know any engineers here in st lucia? I don't, but Google always knows - http://www.socafreak.com/st-lucia-recor ... lucia.html