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Was going up peeps,I'm new to this, i have a little home studio,i have a m-audio fast track,but i want to upgrade,now would it be a good idea to get a better interface,or a better mic which one would make a bigger difference,i have a blue bluebird mic,i was think of getting the Apogee Duet 2... yeah thats my little home studio,maybe yall can give me tips on how to make it better


 

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RemyRAD Fri, 12/02/2011 - 23:45

You want to upgrade but are you currently happy with the way your recordings are already sounding? Not pleased with the sound at all? Mixes don't sound right? Substandard quality? Looking for a magic pill? What is the purpose of upgrading? What kind of sonic image are you trying to create?

You know, a lot of really fine engineers don't give a damn what kind of equipment they are using, provided it works. Others, seem to engineer everything with their eyes. That's fine for television. Of course, I see sound but I'm really not concerned about specifications. I don't need to be concerned about specifications when I am using any kind of professional equipment. That's because I know, with a general disregard for quality, professional equipment delivers professional results. It's the art of recording technique & mixing that makes one heck of a difference regardless of the equipment used. I blather about this because so many of us old cats utilized a very limited amount of professional equipment back in the analog heydays. If the equipment worked, we made quality recordings. I kind of look at the issue of preamp quality and/or converter quality with the analogy of what was your favorite sounding brand of studio recording tape, Ampex, Scotch, Agfa? You know they all sound different. Which one is better? Answer... they're all better. I never liked the smell of Ampex tape so I liked Scotch and to this day, I still drink the stuff. But I actually like the way Scotch not only tasted but the way it sounded. Other guys like Ampex and also made equally fine recordings. How could that be if the Scotch tape was better? Because it really doesn't matter. Only your technique does.

Of course, your desire to upgrade may be because you are slightly more flush right now and so, want to buy yourself a lovely Christmas present. You know, the apogee is only compatible with Macintosh and you didn't indicate what you're using.

I don't like to assume anything
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD Sun, 12/04/2011 - 11:08

Nice to hear you're thinking about it. Instead of running out to purchase more equipment only to find it's only technique that you need to work upon. Of course, if you decide to purchase more equipment, you'll be like the rest of us here. You can never have too much well, yes you can, I do. However, I personally have never swapped out one mediocre preamp for another.

You may even still get to realize how to achieve a different quality of sound, better, crisper, by simply purchasing yourself a single boutique, old-school style, preamp. You plug that into your current interface, line input. So an investment of $500-1000 will get you a top-quality preamp. The converters in your current interface are still better than many hits that were recorded in the early days of digital. An interface that is capable of 24-bit, 96 kHz is way better than the stuff we used back in the early 1980s. But it's that actual front end preamp that generally give us the quality and color of what we are trying to record.

So go ahead, plunk down $600 US, purchase yourself a API or Neve. No, not somebody's new improved preamp interface with blah blah specifications for greater neutrality, uncolored, flavorless, low-fat sound and you'll still be scratching your head in the end, which is not where your head actually is. With the above mentioned preamps, your current interface will still make a fine analog to digital converter. And you will have a jaw dropping experience when you hear these Old Preamps. That sweet, fat, virtually unlimited headroom sound goes way beyond anyone's inexpensively designed, transformer free, warmth free, superior specifications sound. I mean, perhaps if you were a gorgeous broad sounding like you needed to get something of an adult oriented manner that evening, you might want one of those neutered preamps? But if you want that original hit making studios sounding audible phenomenon we call WOW, go old-school preamp with a fabulous input and output transformer, plug it into your existing interface and go wow.

Quite a few of us have been talking about how we are seeing a resurgence to much of the classic analog stuff of years gone by. Of course, we're not talking about that classic equipment plugged into old 1983, first generation 16-bit, 44.1 kHz converters, such as my old Sony PCM-F1. Especially since even the converter in your current interface can fly rings around that. One thing that hasn't changed is the sound of those legacy preamps. Why do you think people are still making preamp equipment like it was still 1970? That's because it's the resurgence of that classic gear that exceeds the tonality of anything for the sake of being considered " state of the art ". I'm not saying that a finer state of the art style transformer free preamp isn't good if you like the sound of sterility. But you have to ask yourself, is that the way music is supposed to sound? It might be if you are trying to demonstrate your technical prowess in recording a Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Somehow I don't think that's what you're after? But even there, my old API & Neve stuff imparts a quality whose specifications may not be as fine as some state of the art stuff. But we don't listen with our eyes but with our ears and our hearts. The resurgence of analog at this past October's AES in NYC I found downright fascinating. The one analog item I didn't see, for the first time in my 39 years of attendance was any analog recorder. So just like a Toyota Prius, the way to go is hybrid old-school/new school. Simply put, old-school preamps with state-of-the-art converters. And since you already have essentially a state-of-the-art converters you need only to purchase a new colorful preamp to create chicken Cordon Bleu instead of just a dead choked chicken.

Chicken lickin chicken licker chicken plucker. I'm all plucked out.
Mx. Remy Ann David

RemyRAD Mon, 12/05/2011 - 09:10

Sure you can. You may just perhaps need a XLR barrel line level to microphone level pad device. Of course feeding a microphone input is an extra amplification stage which people sometimes can detect the difference. No matter, it's something you live with. If it hurts Dr. when I do this, you don't do that but only you can decide. Steve Jobs decided.

You pay your money you take your chances.
Mx. Remy Ann David