Originally Posted by Bauss ➡️

I will be that guy in the chat, and kindly remind everyone that modern stock interface preamps are insanely clean. So, if that is the goal, nicer interface preamps will get you to 60 db of gain with less than -110 db of THD.

Originally Posted by Bauss ➡️

I will be that guy in the chat, and kindly remind everyone that modern stock interface preamps are insanely clean. So, if that is the goal, nicer interface preamps will get you to 60 db of gain with less than -110 db of THD.

Originally Posted by Bauss ➡️

I will be that guy in the chat, and kindly remind everyone that modern stock interface preamps are insanely clean. So, if that is the goal, nicer interface preamps will get you to 60 db of gain with less than -110 db of THD.

Originally Posted by Bauss ➡️

I will be that guy in the chat, and kindly remind everyone that modern stock interface preamps are insanely clean. So, if that is the goal, nicer interface preamps will get you to 60 db of gain with less than -110 db of THD.

Originally Posted by David Rick ➡️

I think that all the "regulars" commenting in this thread are well-aware of that. I do generally encourage beginning engineers and producers to get an interface with good preamps and focus their attention much more on mics and mic placement. A better mic provides much more leverage, but the gray heads in this thread already own plenty of top-tier mics.

Financially speaking, external preamps are an inefficient way to upgrade one's signal path. A lot of your money is paying for the box, the power supply, and the higher overhead associated with low-volume manufacturing rather than into the actual signal path. Nevertheless, outboard preamp designers do spend a lot more on the actual preamp circuitry than interface designers can. Scott Dorsey and I went through the numbers and the component choices in another big thread on this subject. (Perhaps someone will find it and post the link.) Interface designers can buy very nice chips for relatively little money these days. It's top-tier passive components that are still mostly beyond their budget.

The fact that many interface preamps are quite good doesn't change the fact that outboard preamps can, all else being optimal, make an incremental difference that's valuable in specific circumstances. For years, my classical location rig included eight channels of Millennia HV-3D preamps and eight additional preamps built into my Prism Sound interfaces. I always preferred the Millennia preamps on my main channels, but I never cried about using the Prism "chip" preamps once I ran out. They were fine. Would I have swapped the roles of those preamps? No, I heard what I heard and I liked what I liked.

David

Originally Posted by David Rick ➡️

For orchestra at a distance, it's Millennia every time. For close miking a mandolin, I'll switch to Grace so my ears don't bleed, or switch to AEA if I want to round off the transients to make it sound pretty. IMO, prettification of transients is one distinguishing characteristic of Fred Forsell discrete FET designs.

Originally Posted by gravyface ➡️

I'm still waiting for you to admit you were wrong about Klark Teknik clones...

Originally Posted by David Rick ➡️

I own a number of preamps that have been described as "clean" in this thread: Millennia, Grace, AEA, Buzz Audio, DAD, plus (wildcard) LaChapell 983s tube preamp with Jensen input transformers. IMO, only the Millennia, Grace, and DAD actually qualify as tonally uncolored, but they each sound a bit different. The DAD lacks analog outputs, so it's difficult to compare with the others, but I've done a short comparison of Millennia + DAD line-in to DAD mic-in, and I'd say the Millennia adds a bit of extra detail, sort of like dialing up the contrast control in a photo editor. Apart from that, my experience in comparing the Millennia with other preamps is that it can handle huge transients without any tonality change at all. Whether those characteristics are desirable or not depends on the type of session. For orchestra at a distance, it's Millennia every time. For close miking a mandolin, I'll switch to Grace so my ears don't bleed, or switch to AEA if I want to round off the transients to make it sound pretty. IMO, prettification of transients is one distinguishing characteristic of Fred Forsell discrete FET designs. As for the Buzz preamp, it's very "fast" but I think the whole point of the thing is to convert "transient" into "bangin". It's great fun, but it doesn't belong in the same category as the others. I bought the LaChapell primarily for use on lead vocals. It isn't intended to sound like a distortion pedal, but futzing around with the input and output gain knobs feels a bit like switching between two outdated pairs of eyeglasses: different in subtle ways, but never quite like reality. The one really obvious characteristic of that preamp is what its Jensen input transformer does to bass frequencies. It's a very distinctive roll-off curve, and no other input transformer sounds like that.

David

Originally Posted by Bauss ➡️

I will be that guy in the chat, and kindly remind everyone that modern stock interface preamps are insanely clean. So, if that is the goal, nicer interface preamps will get you to 60 db of gain with less than -110 db of THD.

Originally Posted by Bauss ➡️

I will be that guy in the chat, and kindly remind everyone that modern stock interface preamps are insanely clean. So, if that is the goal, nicer interface preamps will get you to 60 db of gain with less than -110 db of THD.