Lost Faith

So I'm more than willing to admit that I'm going insane. I just need to put that out there, up-front and so on.
But I'm having a crisis of faith in preamps.

I have a pair of Neve 1272's (modified by Brent Averill.) I liked them better than the old 1073 I had (I know, let's just list this as apostasy #1). But although I've gotten some great guitar sounds with them, I've really started to prefer the Lindell preamps. So, I figure, maybe as I've gotten older I've been feeling more API than Neve. That's fine.

So the other night I was recording Russian Chamber Chorus with my Zoom F8 and I figured I would use Lindell preamps. Because, you know, more better, right?

No. No, not at all. There at the time I hated the sound of the Lindells on this ensemble. Hated.
Let's review. I have a custom ribbon microphone in the air above the conductor, and a pair of spaced Oktava 012's with hypercardioid capsules in the sweet spot in the audience where we get a "bloom" of the sound.

There's also a backup microphone on that stand with the ribbon. Oh, and the ribbon has a cloudlifter on it.

Now while I was recording it was immediately and imminently obvious that the Lindells were not as detailed and nice for this material. Counter-intuitively, however, when I got home I couldn't tell the difference between the Lindells and the internal preamps on the F8.
Which is odd because you'd expect that differences would be more apparent listening on Sennheiser HD 600's or my Blue Sky system. So why how what wut? How could something be so obvious in the field but not under more controlled conditions?
Well, on location I'm using lower impedance headphones -- Sennheiser HD 280's. And the F8 does not have the world's best headphone amp. So at first I thought that maybe the TRS line inputs took a different path for monitoring off the F8. That doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it's because of the phase relationship between the line inputs and the mic inputs and the actual sound which was bleeding into my headphones from the actual singers?
I have no idea.
But in either case, the F8's preamps are very tres excellent for classical music. Does this mean I should just get rid of the Lindells?
Well, maybe not. Maybe for rock and roll the API-like sound of the Lindells is better. What I noticed was there was less "air" and less detail. But for a fat blues guitar, that might be just the ticket. I don't know.
I do know, however, that the Neve's which I'm not using probably need to go to someone who will love and make records with them. Because I'm not.
So today I recorded RCCNY with a pair of ART Pro MPA II tube preamps. In the field I could not tell the difference between the ART's and the internal preamps to the F8. So I figured "At first, do no harm" and recorded the concert with the ART's.
Listening back to the rehearsals where I was switching between the ART's and the internals can I hear a difference? Uh. Maybe? It's not a big one. And it's certainly under the threshold of placebo effect. So I'm not super into lugging the ART around.
For classical music it seems that the internal preamps to the F8 are more than fine.

§

But wait. That's not all. 2.6kHz. It drives me nuts. Wait 'till next time.

Microphone tests with acoustic guitar

I test an Aurycle kit microphone (a u47 clone, all stock), the Austin ribbon kit (with Cinemag transformer), a Rode NT1-A, and an AKG C12-A.

Left to right: AKG C12-A (with the "Utopia" logo), Rode NT-1A, Austin Ribbon kit (Cinemag transformer), Aurycle U-47 multipattern clone kit.

They all go through the preamps on a Focusrite 18i20. I lined them up with a bit of distance from the guitar just so they shouldn't sound terribly different from one another just due to the positioning.
It's virtually impossible to do a real blind A/B comparison, so I generally don't even try. But there are some clear differences betwixt each of these mics.

Musical Hearing Protection

I saw Turangalîla the other night. The New York Philharmonic can really play. After the performance I was talking to some of the musicians and they were complaining about how loud it was on the stage and that they had to wear hearing protection. I asked what kind and they said "Oh, the yellow kind." I was like "What?"
And they pulled out a pair and showed me.

I was aghast.



The cheapest, most awful, industrial earplugs are what they're using.
I mean yeah, I'm fairly vigilant about steering clear of hearing damage and I do, in fact, carry three entirely different kinds of hearing protection with me. So I showed him my inexpensive "musician's earplugs" which are vastly more musical than the yellow foam things.

One player pointed out that a thing about hearing protection is that they have to be able to put them in and take them out quickly. But even the cheap musician's ones have a thing you can grab to pull them out -- and the fact is you don't need to as much because your hearing is "flatter" than the high-end pillow the industrial plugs put in your ears (as well as the fact that you have to wait a moment to be sure they expand and start working).

I used to have custom Etymotics but my ears changed shape over the years and I went to soft ear plugs rather than the hard custom kind. I could go back and get a custom mold made again but I do sort of like the softness of the regular kind. But then...

Etymotics makes the Music Pro, which are like the musical, active version of Peltier shooters earplugs. $300 -- so they're even pricier than the custom-molded passive ones. But for musicians they look pretty amazing. I'll tell you more when I know more.

The Future

Every once in a while I look at a new piece of audio gear and think about how freaking far we've come. This Soundcraft UI-10 is a pretty amazing little box. A 16x4 mixer with complete digital control of every dang thing for less than $550. It only records two channels but for a regular rock band gigging situation it really gives you everything between the mic cables and the power amps for the PA.

Kids These Days

Look at this. Just look at this thing. Sixteen analog inputs. Fourteen analog outputs. A gazillion more digital. And all for fifteen hundred bucks. Good grief.

I can't even begin to express how important input metering is on channels. Especially for live sound.

The Behringer X32 Producer solves many of life's problems.
When I look back on my time in audio I realize that I've spent a lot of effort trying to get cheap mixers (read: more expensive than $1500) to work for me. Sure, on high-end mixers there were always enough outputs (strangely, inputs is almost never the problem outputs is). And now you can just buy one of these Behringer things and have all the routing you've always needed.
Yup, all the time I'd spent on mixers back in the day where I was frustrated there was at the time a solution. It just wasn't cheap. The solution was several tens of thousands of dollars. And it wasn't 'till nigh on the end of my career that I was working on those mixing boards.

Anybody remember these things?

Looking at this makes me sick to my stomach.

Thinking about that Yamaha PM1000 the New York Shakespeare Festival used to have just makes me shudder. Three generations later with the PM3000 they still couldn't get it to sound good. But everybody specified them in the late 80's early 90's because when you flipped the power switch they turned on. And in the world of pro audio, just getting the thing to turn on was half the battle.
When I was using a PM1000 it was hopelessly out-of-date at the time (Macbeth with Raul Julia if you must know).
While I was there it got replaced with a DDA mixer which was vastly, oh so vastly, better. Sheesh.