I love experimenting so please bear with me:

I guess we're all well aware that great recordings can be and in fact are made with only two microphones. Meaning two channels of any top-of-the-line preamp can absolutely be enough. Having said that:

Let's say you're recording an acoustic guitar in this great sounding room and you want to capture the room as well. You're using 6 microphones in total. You place two mics in front of the guitar (utilizing your favorite stereo recording technique) and then another two mics over the shoulders of the player to capture even more of what's happening. Finally, you place two room mics to capture the great sounding room as well.

The thing is, you only have ONE top-of-the-line preamp unit (read Gordon or Pueblo) which has only two channels, so the other four needed preamp channels will be your audio interface's/converter's/recorder's preamps, say Prism Sound Titan's or DAD AX32's or SONOSAX SX-R4+'s.

I have three questions. They're all kind of similar but maybe not exactly:

01. Which two microphones would you choose to connect to your top-of-the-line preamps? The close mics? The over-the-shoulder mics? Or the room mics? Some would probably quickly answer: "of course the close mics". But remember, the room is a great sounding one, so the room mics are also capturing a great sound and one can argue since Gordon and Pueblo have great "reach", it might actually be better to connect your room mics to your top-of-the-line two-channel preamp (Gordon or Pueblo). I'd like to hear your opinions.

02. This is my main question. The reason I created this thread and gave you the example above is to figure out EXACTLY how many channels of top-of-the-line preamp one can "get by" with? Two? Or will four become infinitely more versatile? Of course you still have your SONOSAX, Prism Sound or DAD preamps which can easily be argued are top-of-the-line enough. So maybe forget about this whole thing and just use DAD's or Titan's or SX-R4+'s preamps?

03. How many microphones would you say are too many, when it comes to recording your acoustic instruments (say an acoustic guitar or a cello) especially when you're doing experimental stuff/music?

I appreciate all your answers.

• preamps don't have 'reach': condenser mics (compared to dynamic mics) have 'reach'.
  
• there are far more manufacturers of '2-channel high end preamps' than just gordon or pueblo.
  
• get the best gear you can and as much as you need; in a clinch, rent additional gear.
  
• the amount of mics depends on the size of the instrument, the mixing format, how many options you want to have while mixing: you might wanna use different mono and stereo 'spots' (coincident and spaced, very close, close and not so close, different type of mics, mics suitable for specific frequency area, two pairs of 'mains', three pair of ambis etc. - and then there are several surround (or even immersive) formats which additionally can get downmixed...

You're right, by reach I meant their vanishingly low noise which makes it easier to boost their signal without much noise making them ideal for much more delicate sounds and placing a microphone further away from the instruments.

I fail to see why you even had to say this. Of course there are. Lake People, NPNG, John Hardy, Dave Hill's offerings come to mind. But nothing except Gordon and Pueblo interests me. That's why I only gave those examples.

Yes that's the idea, getting the best gear one can. But personally I do not like renting. That's why I created this thread.

there are a lot of variables, like deedee pointed out..
at that level is a matter of taste... see with a dealer if you could test some mics and pres combinations out, or rent to shootout, and keep what YOU like.

Schoeps, Sennheiser mkh line, DPA's, Neumann, Josephson, Milab or Pearl or even some ribbon mics if that's your thing or suit the production goals..
for the room I tend to prefer the Schoeps, but it really depends on what you want/like or what the productions/songs need.
Austrian Audio OC818 offer the great option to modify/change the polar patterns in post through their polar designer app.. a pair of OC818 needs then 4 channels.. a great tool that can really have a big impact on the end result..

Hardy twin servo, Gordon, Pueblo, Millennia, Lake, ADT..(even SCA J99)..long list of great pres.. as well as the DAD or Merging ones..

I do believe that there's no other way... you need to go into this journey, invest quite a bit of time (and money)..see with dealers and/or rent, and test things out..
there's no other way..

good luck!



Cheu

1. Listen and compare.
While Pueblo, Gordon, DAD have the top tier preamps ideally suited for your situation, these examples (associated with transparency) may demonstrate subtle differences.

So what's the consensus for most analog sounding converters in 2020? (page 25)
(example referencing another thread):
Perhaps Merging may be preferred for the principal stereo room mics, while DAD for closer micing (Edit: paraphrasing this appraisal, as my notable comparisons have been w/ DA. Also if you're adding outboard pre's, perhaps not Merging).

Practical issues might also factor: outboard may be easier to access gain levels on the fly for example, while with the top tier mentioned, would a significant difference be apparent to justify altering workflow on location?

For the sake of argument, your assumption favouring Pueblo and Gordon, the question might follow: would they surpass the total integration of DAD and Merging? Outboard preamps don't exist in a vacuum, and must be paired with AD; thus mention of the two shining examples where the implementation of the analogue mic stage with the digital domain may indeed prove exceptional.

(Not wishing to favour any of these four, rather it's a personal query as well, wishing to test for myself as some point).

2. With great respect for Prism conversion, I'm not convinced the mic preamp+AD would be included in the same league as others mentioned.

3. “experimental stuff” - wider limits and resources are likely encouraged. (Stereo vs Surround goal ?)

Afa Stereo mix: be wary of comb filtering

Personal preference and practical constraints for location setup (solo guitar / cello) would likely be 3 to 4 mics. 6 for alternate choices concerning a stereo mix (eg in a live performance setting 6 mics were sourced understanding that principal room mic placement was more constrained with an audience present).

One might propose to rely on 2 pairs of room mics instead of the over-the-shoulder array, for optimal principal placement on location with an A/B comparison (to get the ball rolling, though once selected you may wish to strike a pair and use for other scenarios). From experience however, with multiple sessions and setups in the same location (and room placement established) 3 to 4 mics should be plenty. Keep in mind (a great sounding) venue is on the clock $ !!

Best advice: take the extra time to properly place the essential mics. This will be the greatest sound factor. (If it’s a closed session) even take time to practice positioning with the performer, providing reminders when they change position, as it changes the sound. (Given positioning feedback between takes, they'll be pro's by the end of a number of sessions with keeping within a tight placement margin).

I think you're absolutely right Cheu. Thank you.

I agree with you. That's why at some point in the post I said "maybe just forget about these top-of-the-line preamps and get the AX32 or SONOSAX SX-R4+ and use their preamps instead".

Mine too.

I agree with you. Personally if their built-in preamps were to be used as well, I would choose DAD and/or SONOSAX over Prism Sound.

No surround goal. :D I don't understand surround.

So I guess 4 is the number I was afraid of which means: (Gordon: $6,600 | Pueblo: $4,700). That's why I told myself just get the AX32 or the SONOSAX and use their internal preamps instead.

One of the benefits of being a "bedroom producer" is there tends not to be a clock ticking, this means you have time to experiment. In which case you'll often get better results re-amping to get room sound over miking the room to begin with - this is because you can experiment with speaker and mic placement and listen in real time after the tracking session to optimise the sound without an artist being inconvenienced. For re-amping acoustic sources I use an old cheap powered monitor which I can move around the room as my source - for re-amping electric guitar and bass (or anything else I might want to experiment with) I made my own little re-amp boxes for under £10 a piece to convert line-level to instrument level to keep the guitar amps happy - although these things are relatively cheap anyway. I’ve also used a portable Bluetooth speaker as a source occasionally which adds a baked-in pre-delay due to the Bluetooth D>A latency – which is interesting!

I have long mic and guitar cables as well, long enough to take the source and mic into other rooms - particularly the tiled bathroom if want a reverberant space. The Bluetooth speaker in the bathroom trick recorded with a ribbon mic makes an interesting and vibey mono drum-room track. I tend NOT to send the cymbals (or overheads) – just kick, snare and toms. Although I find that since I bought UAD Ocean Ways about five years ago, I do this sort of thing much less – a combination of “good enough” and laziness! You can get good room vibes with Eventide’s TVerb too.

This is a great point.

To the OP, the "point" of the Pueblo/Gordon style preamps is generally to capture as close to the source as conceivable. So, I would think about what you want the end product to sound like in the mix, then find the spot in the room where it sounds most like what you want... whether that's with your head a foot from the guitar or 10 ft back. Then put the mics there (the specific mics obviously are critical, obviously, as noted) and use the "fancy" preamp there.

Use the other preamps for the other signals as an insurance policy if you change your mind there (or better yet, just scrap them and go with just 2)

To me preamps arw not at all divided in higher and lower quality. I mean, sure they are, but more importantly they make the audio feel different. Causing different connotations.

So you'd use whatever pair on whatever needed its feels. But yeah, 4 or 6 is definitely more flex than 2.

north of 6k for a few preamps?! well...

imo preamps haven't been re-invented in ca. 40 years so for this amount of money, you could get ca. 24 veeery decent remotely controlled preamps with equally decent converters!

well, according to another recent thread here the 10k vacuvox preamps are now the ones to beat!

they better perform well then...

to put things into perspective: i bought some 120 preamps in recent months - for far less than 10k!

[i can assure you that they are pretty much at the top of the game even though their design goes back a few years]

here are two of three racks (see pic) - please also note the 'preamps' for digital mics at the top of the racks ;-)

What's the primary use case for that setup?

location recording/broadcasting, mostly of classical music or jazz...

...but then, i'm using a more or less identical rig for most other areas of our profession (studio recording/mixing, live mixing/touring, mastering), regardless of genre.



p.s. the thing about having this many high quality preamps is NOT having to prioritise!

I started doing home recording for solo fingerstyle arrangements on acoustic guitar. My initial goal was to focus on 2 really nice channels. I started with a pair of Speck 5.0 preamps and a Mytek Stereo192 ADC. Over time I picked up a Gordon Model 5 and another Mytek ADC. More recently I've been doing a bit of field recording and I've added a Metric Halo ULN-8 interface. So, all the equipment is really nice, but at different levels of 'really nice'. I've been using 8-12 channels lately for the field recordings.

I'm maybe in a similar situation as you, in that I would like 4 channels of my best equipment (i.e. Gordon). One reason is that I'm not experienced enough to get the mics positioned optimally. What I've done on occasion is to have 2 pairs of mics on my main stand (spaced pair of omnis and near-coincident cardioids, or a Straus Paket spaced pair array). This allows me to choose the best pair or blend them based on how things got captured. It also allows me flexibility when recording a choir that has around 6 different size and formations during the course of the concert. Right now I'm often wondering do I put my best recording gear on the omni pair or on the cardioid pair?

I tend to prioritize the signal chain based on how prominently each channel or pair will be used in the mix. For the type of work I do, that usually means prioritizing the main pair. If I have spots, I expect them to be mixed at lower level. Ambience channels are often what's left over. Frequently, that's the built-in preamps of my Prism Orpheus interface. Another thing to consider is how many "subjects" those channels are covering. My main pair hears the whole ensemble, so I want the cleanest preamp and converter there because there's a lot more potential for intermodulation.

I've no problem intermingling multiple preamp types. It's not unheard of for me to use a "slower" preamp for spot mics because that partly compensates for reverberant "compression" that isn't present in close placement. Mixing converters is a thornier question because I worry about clock wander. Still, if I need to bring in a couple of extra channels on optical fiber, I'd probably use those channels for ambience mics. My reasoning is that reverberent sound is pretty incoherent to start with, so a bit of extra jitter isn't going to make much difference.

David L. Rick
Seventh String Recording

This is kind of how I see preamps, less as high or low quality but rather as types.
Fet's, tubes ,transistors etc
If I want clean low distortion lots of gain lots of headroom, bipolar transistor designs are my first consideration, for example.

Fashion and trend doesn't dictate quality to me, amp design and circuit design does.

Interesting. I understand why you would want your clearest sounding preamps on your main imaging mics but I am wondering how there is greater potential for inter-modulation distortion under this condition?
Is your concern the feedback circuit of the preamps?
One would have to be driving very hard for this to become an issue, perhaps I'm not understanding your concern, but I am intrigued.
Tube mics into transistor preamps into quality converters doesn't sound like a scenario for intermodulation distortion to me.
I appreciate any further explanation

I think the idea is that this mic pair would be picking up multiple fundamentals (or other higher energy partials) of the sound of potentially different instruments, so there is a greater chance of some kind of intermodulation distortion in trying to capture that.

That makes some sense, though I can't say I ever considered that problem before

I suggest getting a 8 channels of preamp and you do not have to start out with the best. Getting the best is done when you have fully refined your recording and engineering skills.

Here I'm a SONOSAX freak and the R4+ has only 4 preamps so that is not enough in my opinion. Don't get AX32 because you need to refine your skills first.

The D.A.V. electronics Broadhurst Gardens No. 2 four ch. preamp is excellent. Buy 2.

Recently I tried out the Focusrite Clarett+ 8Pre. It is excellent.

Audient preamps are excellent. Both Audients are 8 bangers.

Hardy is excellent although under my scheme you need two 4 channel units.

No need to shoot the moon on cost.

The source is making the sound. So the good preamp will pick up the sound of the source.

I guess maybe. I don't see how intermodulation distortion can arrive from the source(s) though. If the THD of the amplifier is so low it's not worth mentioning, the risk of intermodulation distortion from the equipment is near nill or well out of human hearing.
The tube microphone amplifiers NFB might be his concern. But I thought most quality vintage tube mics don't even use an NFB circuit. Perhaps newer mic designs do? We're talking about what most regard as smearing, in that regard, how would one acutely hear that over the blending of shared fundamentals naturally and desirably smearing in a gluey musical way that I would think would benefit the main stereo image and any contributions from close or spot mics would clarify?
@ Plush any thoughts based on your prolific experiences ?

Certainly not! Where, except from your imagination, did you come up with this idea?

That’s not how it works.
Why spread a myth on GS??

I was replying to a question about another post, and trying to interpret what I thought that post was saying.

I was supposing that there could be some kind of complexity in the meeting of pressure waves from different signals. And, in the case of a stereo mic, maybe it's compounded by having the same signal in two different mics being combined, and that signal now going through two channels adding it's own slightly different distortion characteristics.

and like I said, it makes "some sense" but hadn't really ever thought about it. I was trying to invite correction, and happy to be corrected; not trying to spread a myth

edited for clarity

Phase interactions are typically not considered distortion, but different combinations of phase interaction would perhaps impact how distortion occurs when that signal is amplified.

yeah that's one part of what I'm wondering about, as it relates to the "stereo aspect" of the question.

and then the other part, is if you have two different signals in a room going into one mic (let alone 2) and they are going through a system that adds harmonic distortion...given that the first paragraph in the description of IMD on Wikipedia is the following

Relative to your first point, can you elaborate on what you mean by the "stereo aspect?"

Are we talking about summing stereo sources or interactions in a room at playback?

meaning that the phase becomes relevant when you have 2 mics in stereo (assuming we ignore room reflections).

but secondarily, there are two completely unrelated signals combing in one mic when mic'ing an ensemble or drum kit

Think about it this way maybe. Phase interactions on a microphone capsule always exist. Even a single source with a single microphone will have phase interactions in the signal in everything but a purely anechoic space due to reflections.

IMD is more about the frequency content differences and non-linearities in a system. Think inputs vs outputs. If the Output contains a perfect replication of the Input other than potential differences in JUST amplitude or linear phase shift, then no IMD occurred. Leaning this direction is what we typically call "clean" amplification. Any difference in the output other than amplitude or phase shift can be considered intermodulation. That variable amount of intermodulation is often called character/tone/mojo/yadda yadda.

right, like I said, for a second I'm ignoring phase issues from room reflections

in this thread, we are discussing why we might use a "high end preamp of the Gordon/Pueblo type" i.e. extremely linear/transparent.

David Rick mentioned considering how many "subjects" the mic was "hearing". Somewhat was meant. I was trying to be helpful by explaining how it could work.

Apparently I didn't do a good job because you have basically re-explained the point I was trying to make back to me haha. If you are prioritizing "realism", you might want the most linear preamp when amplifying multiple unrelated signals, and possibly the problem is compounded by multiple mics.

Whether we are now both promulgating myths is up for Plush to decide