Posted
by Lynn Fuston on May 26th, 1999 at 02:52:46:
In our last episode, Lynn Engineer and Larry Producer had decided with
Amy Artist that the Manley mic was the best. So now it was time to decide
on preamps. We lined
up all four. Using 30 dB of gain on each.
1) The console pre in the Neve 8068 that we were recording on. This
is the pre we had used to decide which mic to use, so it was the benchmark.
It sounded very nice. Very usable. Everyone thought it was very nice
sounding.
2) The Martech MSS-10. This unit
belongs to a good friend of mine that I greatly respect as a great engineer.
He loves it and uses it exclusively. So I was quite eager to hear it.
We plugged the Manley into it and rolled the tape. Ouch. Very bright.
Enormously bright. And very hard, even brittle in the midrange. We turned
it off after about 10 seconds. The sound was so piercing that I kept
wanting to turn it down, and even after turning it down, I kept wanting
to turn it down.
I know the person who designed this preamp and have used his gear and
modified consoles for years. He's a genius. The only way I can describe
this reaction and this sound is that there must have been some mismatch
between the output and input impedance of the mic and the pre. It was
really unusable. (Again, that is for THIS voice in THIS studio with
THIS mic on THIS day.)
3) The blue Focusrite ISA-110s. This unit, which I have owned since
1987 (the first ever piece of Focusrite gear in Nashville, by the way),
was my reference pre for years. There are few things that don't sound
phenomenal on it. I plugged the mic into it.
Sure enough, I was not disappointed. It sounded about 60% bigger than
the Neve pre. There was a depth and dimensionality that words can't
describe. It was warm and present and seemed to have "more of everything"
than the Neve, which we had all agreed sounded nice. We think we have
a clear winner. It probably can't get any better than this. But on to
contestant #4.
4) The Buzz Audio MA-2. This 2 channel mic pre
is very rare....they are made in New Zealand. I found out about them
when a producer returned from recording a project "down under" and we
spent 6 hours trying to match a vocal sound. We couldn't do it with
ANYthing in Nashville. So I spent months tracking down the builder and
eventually bought six pair of them. I can tell you more if you want
to know. [Buzz Note - they are not so "rare" these days]
So we lined it up and rolled the tape. Wow. It wasn't like the Focusrite.
It was warmer and bigger and had all the presence of the Focusrite but
it was smoother in the midrange. It made the Focusrite sound more like
the Class AB design that it is. (The Buzz is all discrete Class A.)
The midrange was silky, not forward. The warmth of the vocal just came
out of the speakers and wrapped around you like a big warm hug. The
sound was huge. It accented her enormous voice and brought out the lower
midrange richness that we were looking for like no other pre did.
So, the verdict? The artist came in. Agreed with my conclusions on the
first two.
Nice on #1.
Harsh on #2.
Now the hard part. Do we like the more focused, present but slightly
forward midrange from the Focusrites or the warmer bigger sound of the
Buzz?
After some discussion, I convinced them that getting the midrange presence
of the Focusrite would be easier to accomplish by EQing the Buzz than
to get the warmth of the Buzz by low end EQing the Focusrite. So the
final verdict was Manley to the Buzz with 28 dB of gain.
We tried patching in my Tubetech CL-1A and it messed too much with the
sound. We tried patching in my Pultecs to do any EQing that we might
need on a cut to cut basis. It changed the sound too much too.
So the whole record has been cut with the mic feeding the pre feeding
the tape machine input. It sounds fabulous. It doesn't need a thing.
My second heard it today and was bowled over by the depth and warmth
of her voice. I think we captured the best her voice has to offer and
she agrees with us. It really does sound great.
Now to make sure we keep that sound in the mix. That's the task for
this week.
Lynn Fuston
3D Audio Inc
Music Mixing and Mastering
Franklin, TN
