Like many home enthusiasts, I’ve collected a variety of gear, many of it toward the low-end category, much of it not entirely necessary for the music I want to record.
We are trying a minimalist approach to music and life in general, more in keeping with the organic/folky music we tend to make.
The plan is to have a small amount of high quality gear which can be setup with the minimum of fuss so we can easily capture the live sessions we are now enjoying more than the more laborious multiple-overdub approach.
I’ve sold off old microphones, preamps, cables etc and replaced it with a pair of Beyerdynamic MC930
I’m heading towards having just 4 microphones; the MC930 and a pair of U87 clones I built.
Im hoping this will cover most of our needs - usually just recording acoustic guitar or piano and 1-2 vocals, occasionally recording small acoustic ensembles. Plus any overdubs deemed necessary.
I was originally looking at the slightly more expensive km184 pair but the internets were full of praise for the MC930 and since they were cheaper…
Unfortunately, I have hurt my arm enough to be banned from playing guitar for a week or so so I can only admire them in their box for now!
They are beautiful though…
The next step is to bring the preamp/interface section more inline with this 4 mic setup.
After the downsizing I am left with:
Focusrite ISAOne single input preamp
Allen&Heath ZED10 mixer with 4 mic inputs
Focusrite ICE16 with a whopping 16 ins and outs
Obviously this doesnt quite match what we have mic wise. What might be a good setup to work towards?
Features I would like to keep:
The mixer can obviously control my speaker (ADAM 3FX) volume and has headphone outputs, both very important
The ICE16, while having far more I/O than I need has a nice direct-to-usb recording feature, so I can take it ‘on location’, although this happens very rarely.
The ISA One, is obviously, just a nice a preamp
I going for ‘high-end’ but within reason. I.E I see no point in paying 1000s because something is vintage. My personal feeling is that once you have got up to the level of your MC930, ISAOne (or maybe a little more expensive) your are ‘high end’ and the marginal differences/gains in sound quality for more expensive units is just that - marginal.
An Apollo quad would be really nice if you can fit it in your budget. It has the 4 preamps you need for now but is expandable if you need to go beyond that.
What’s an ADAM 3FX?
I went through the same thing where I moved the studio into a simple house and minimized down to the core. Stripped out all of my outboard gear except for one compressors. Even the patch bays. Gone. I have two preamps (Blue Robbie’s) and really just 2 primary mics (Blue Bottles). I mean I kept about 20 small mics like 57’s, 609’s, 421’s, D112s, Beta 52’s for convenience…but they’re relatively inconsequential. 95% of what I’ve recorded in the last year has come through those. And if I actually need a Telefunken or a C414 or a Neumann, I can borrow one. Part of this was the decision to not record drums. And when I rebuilt this studio, I made the conscious decision to not compete in the tracking facility market. Its really simplified things.
Now everything is streamlined, and piped in and out of a digital mixer. It allows me to focus the entire workflow to being in the box.
I meant A3X lol…brain lapse there.
Apollo looks nice. Monitor output and 2 headphone outputs look ideal. How are the preamps on it? I always read about how preamps bundled in an interface are generally lower quality. At the price you would expect them to be pristine though…
There is (and always will be) heavy debate around the worth of preamps. I try and take a modest, reasonable, middle ground position on this. One one extreme its ‘OMG! If you don’t have a 1073 you’ve got shit’, vs ‘meh…preamps are preamps and I don’t give a fuck’. If elitist gear snobs are right, and the non-snobs are left, then I’m slightly left of middle. Really that comes down to someones personal opinion of how important they think a preamp is. I’m of the opinion that it matters, but not all that much.
The whole concept of the Apollo is that the preamp changes color and flavor based on which modeling preamp you run concurrently it with. If you don’t like the sound of one preamp, you can change it with a mouse click. Under many circumstances this is bullshit, as is a lot of modeling technology. But keep in mind that UAD makes some of the best analog emulators you can find. As far as the color of the preamps goes, I would say (choosing my words carefully) that they’re adequately neutral. They are perfectly usable, with a decent noise floor, sufficient headroom, and they’ll never get in your way or cause you problems.
I would not go as far as to suggest the D/A converter is any better or worse than my rack of $5000 Avids or my $100 Focusrite. I think its a total wash. Yes I can hear a difference between the two of them. But is it noticeable? Only very slightly.
