I usually record myself singing and I’d like to buy a nice microphone preamp perhaps a Golden age 73 or a tambourine Audio EC1.
I am however wary of setting it up, singing something and ‘committing it to tape’ and then being unable to edit it later (In case I have overprocessed it or something).
and therefore my question: can I commit something unprocessed to tape and then run it through a microphone preamplifier at mixdown, adding colour and saturation to taste?
Or is the interaction between microphone and preamplifier very important at the tracking stage?
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I use a rode NT2000 - but sometimes I feel my old Shure beta 87 a sounds a little better on my voice…
also have an MXL Genesis that I got from Paul White - haven’t tried singing through that yet
Finding the right mic for your voice (and having a suitable, treated, space in which to record) can, in my opinion, make far more of a difference than switching pre-amps (assuming that your audio interface has a half decent pre-amp).
If you're reaching for a new pre-amp before trying the MXL then my diagnosis would be a severe case of GAS. I also suspect that you are being over critical of your own vocals, I wish that I could sing like you.
Im all for outboard Preamps while recording (compressors for that matter aswell, but that’s another subject) not just mics, but simple DI recording of Bass and guitars you can add a lot more character than an interface preamp. Do a test section of recording and listen back to set your levels so you know you aren’t going to cook it. It’s like anything the more you do it the better you’ll get at setting levels consistently.
I wouldn’t use one during Mixdown, but that’s not to say you couldn’t, it’s not really common practice.
Thing is - my vocal recordings thus far have been done with relatively basic gear - the last one you heard was a Shure Beta 87 into a Zoom TAC2 interface .
I have spent way more on my guitars - and I'm not even really a guitarist (I'm competent, but mostly as a backing / rhythm player).
So I keep wondering if I might possibly sound better with a better quality microphone - signal chain.
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I've never wanted to use one later and the way it reacts to a mic can't be duplicated later. Plus you'll get better gain before noise with a quality preamp and only that is enough reason to use it all the time.
Even if you had an API/Neve/BAE preamp it isn't really worth doing that way- it sounds better going in.
Also you may need to go out of your interface, into a DI (to get the line level down to mic level) and then amplify it back up to line level and re-record it?
The preamps you are naming won't really add much- nothing you actually want anyway.
I sometimes use my Groove Tubes Vipre preamp to run pre-recorded things through, but that is a bit of a special case, and it usually isn't vocals, but rather bass, snare or soft synths.
It was fashionable in the 00's to use a passive summing unit, like the Folcrum, which required you to amplify the summed mix with a stereo preamp. I did a bunch of A/B tests and preferred the in the box mixdown.
There are loads of really terrific 'analogue-style colour' plugins.
My favourites are Soundtoys Decapitator, Plugin Alliance Black Box, UA Thermionic Culture Vulture.
Also consider UA Distressor or the even better Empirical Labs Arouser plugin.
Or a tape plugin- the best being UA Ampex ATR102.
Decapitator is the one I go to most- it is on every track I've made since it came out, usually at least 3-5 instances of it.
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