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sounds like I’m talking myself in to a new interface:)
https://www.soundskulptor.com/en/products.php?cat=2
But an outboard compressor, EQ, or preamp.
And release some music!
https://youtu.be/Js_bKnnLOSI
f£&king brilliant idea!
and they don’t make it anymore!... I’d have one of those in a shot!
Combined the above, it was worth it but hoenstly, I can't really tell that there was an improvement in recorded sound over my scarlett and I would be pretty disappointed if that was my sole reason.
Band Stuff: https://navigationofficial.bandcamp.com/album/silhouette-ep
https://studiocare.com/products/cranborne-audio-500r8?variant=31467411963950¤cy=GBP&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=google+shopping&gclid=CjwKCAiA4o79BRBvEiwAjteoYF6YSVvjClsdWOwwSngMCrwAafzPHszDoEYUpv0GmlEfCzPpvQZxNhoCaPsQAvD_BwE
Unless they have some extra features beyond the preamp itself (some drive/saturation/enhancement options, or channel strip EQ/compression features etc.), one preamps pretty much sound like any other when used cleanly. In my opinion there's a lot of b******* being written and believed about the merits of one mic preamp over the other!
One of my regrets when running a professional studio was spending too much money on the space and getting the acoustics right and not enough on some good pre amps and some better mic's. I always though get the fundamentals right first and then I can upgrade the mic's and pre's. In reality though the money was never there to do that so we recorded everything through the same 24 sterile clean Tascam pre amps for 5 years. A friend of mine though, who I sub let'ed some space spent all his money on pre amps and his end results were better than mine. There's something very musical about a transformer coupled pre class A discreet chipless pre amp. Even when your not really driving into it
That's fair enough, though I think we're polar opposites on this and are not going to agree!
In the interest of balance, I run a commercial studio (didn't design it or buy most of the gear though, it's been here for 40 years!), and I'm so, so glad that they got the space and the acoustics right first before anything else.
We do have decent preamps of course (Amek 56 channel desk, plus some 500-series external preamps), and my partner running the studio is [i]much[/i] more into his preamps than me, but I would much rather track in a good-sounding space like we have through Behringer preamps than I would in a poor sounding room through a Neve desk. For me, the performance, instruments and recording space are everything, followed by microphone choice and placement.
Preamps I care about more than converters, but not my much - they're both near the bottom of my list of priorities!
The idea of matching preamps to sources is a fairly new thing as well, and was mostly unheard of in the days when studios all needed a big desk - the preamps were the ones in the desk, and that was it!
Sound On Sound magazine did an interesting test a few years ago where a range of preamps were tested (NOT driven though - they were all kept within expected operating conditions, so everything was clean), and I think everyone concluded that there was virtually no difference from one to the other.
I have to admit I find it hard to believe that your friend's preamps led to better recordings than you in a nice space. The space has massively more impact on acoustic sound that the preamps have. Are you certain it's not a case of "the grass is greener..."?! And if there really was a marked difference, I'd be astonished if it was down to preamps!
That being said, I do like nice preamps, because I like nice things, and the more expensive ones can be worth it for extra features, or switched gain knobs, or to avoid gain-bunching at the end of a cheaper preamp's gain knob etc. It's just that these benefits are rarely to do with the sound itself.
I did buy a couple of the new-ish Cranborne Camden 500 preamps recently, and I like them very much - the 'Mojo' thing they have is very flexible, and can go from very subtle to no-so-subtle colouration. Great tools. But I'd argue that the 'Mojo' is a feature apart from the preamp circuitry itself.