Budget Preamp Comparison

[8th_note]

I?ve assembled a motley crew of budget and midrange preamps and I thought I would post a review along with sound clips. There's been several threads recently about budget pres so maybe this can add a little confusion to the chaos.

I?ve been working my way up the gear ladder and my near-term goal was to be able to record 12 tracks simultaneously without having to use my Mackie mixer. Some of my projects are tracked at least partially ?live? and I wanted to have a set of decent recording channels to work from. When I got my Presonus BlueTube and found that it was plainly better than the Mackie I decided to try some other gear that wouldn?t break the bank. Through careful buying (mostly ebay) I put together a total of 11 outboard channels for an average of $130 per channel. The outboard pres consist of an Electro Harmonix 12AY7, ART Pro Channel (2), Aphex 207, Presonus BlueTube (4 channels), and a Presonus MP20.

All of these outboard preamps are an easily distinguishable upgrade in sound from my Mackie. Here?s a brief review of each. I recorded acoustic guitar on each unit and links for the sound clips appear below.

Mackie 1642VLZ: Neutral character with nothing particular sticking out as a problem but the sound is flat and one-dimensional. On acoustic guitar the Mackie slurs the attack ? the other pres are more articulate. On the clips listen to the 12AY7 or the Pro Channel compared to the Mackie and you should hear a more 3 dimensional sound and you can more clearly hear the pick hitting each string. On vocals the Mackie gives a flat image with a pinched character. The Pro Channel & 12AY7, on the other hand, gives a much more 3 dimensional representation on vocals. It isn?t just the pres on the Mackie that are the problem. I lose most of the sonic benefit if I plug the pre?s output into the line-in on the Mackie. The pres have to go straight into the card to sound good.

Presonus BlueTube: This poor little guy gets trashed on the forums but I?ve gotten pretty good results with mine (I have 2 units for 4 channels). It is criticized as dark and noisy but I?ve been able to make it work reasonably well. I think the reason may be that my card (Delta 1010) has a switch for +4/-10 for each input channel and I run the BlueTube into the higher gain setting (-10). I figured out quick that the unit is noisy when running into the balanced +4 setting so I changed it to -10 with dramatic results. It still ain?t the quietest preamp on the block but it isn?t bad if you don?t have to overdrive it. Using it with a high output LDC on vocals or a neodymium magnet dynamic on a loud guitar cab, it?s fairly quiet. This is actually my go-to pre for electric guitars. Three different times I?ve compared it to the MP20 and Pro Channel and each time it sounded the best. Turning the drive control up adds a pleasant veneer of darkness and distortion to a brittle electric guitar. On vocals it beats the Mackie every time but it isn?t nearly as good as the 12AY7 or Pro Channel. It sounds decent on drums and it?s especially good on kick.

Aphex 207: Decent all around preamp. Brighter and more articulate than the BlueTube but not as 3 dimensional as the 12AY7, Pro Channel, or MP20. It has two nice features, 1) a built in limiter that works well on drums, and 2) adjustable output so you can calibrate the meters to your card and recording software.

Presonus MP20: These comments pertain to the stock opamps. The unit has a nice lush sound with no hype. Very quiet. Articulate on acoustic guitar but does not have as much of the 3 dimensional character on vocals as the 12AY7 or the Pro Channel. The IDSS control adds a little tube style sparkle to the upper frequencies. I upgraded the opamps in my unit and I?ll give a report on that later. For now lets just say that if you have an MP20, upgrading to the Burr Brown 627 opamps is a no-brainer. It puts it in a different class.

ART Pro Channel (stock tubes): Lots of depth, great articulation, plus a sheen of tube sparkle. This pre sounds gorgeous and is a huge step up from the Mackie. It sounds a lot like the 12AY7 but is a little fuller on the low end. The Pro Channel has a compressor along with an EQ. I didn?t know how much I would use the compressor (I mix in the box) but it?s been nice to have the ability to apply a little compression during recording to just tame the peaks, allowing me to record at a little higher level. There is a ton of gain control ? you can really crank this hummer. I have two Pro Channels and I like them so much that I bought a new MPA Gold so I could have 4 channels of this pre. If I can?t get decent tracks with this thing I may as well give up.

Electro Harmonix 12AY7 (stock tubes): This was the second outboard preamp I got (after the BlueTube). I got it on Joel Hamilton?s recommendation. The first time I tried it on vocals I could see what the all the fuss was about. This pre gives that 3 dimensional vocal character that I hear in other recordings but couldn?t get on mine. I literally said to myself, ?OK, so that?s how they do it.? On acoustic guitar you can hear the pick hit each string during a chord whereas on the Mackie it is smeared together. The guitar sound also has great depth. I was going to get a couple more of these but I found the Pro Channel on ebay and decided to give it a try. After owning both and comparing them head to head several times I have to say that the sound is about a toss up between the ART and EH. With stock tubes the ART pre has a little more mid bass, the EH sounds a little leaner. They both sparkle in the higher frequencies and both have a lot of depth. In other words, they both sound great. The ART pres have a lot more gain and the MPA Gold has variable input impedance plus a higher tube voltage setting for more headroom ? making it more versatile than the EH. I?m going to try several tubes in the EH and the Pro Channels to see what effect that has.

One more comment. It may sound like I?m trashing the Mackie but this mixer served me well. I did some fairly decent sounding projects with just the Mackie and the BlueTube pres (at least my clients were happy). If you'd like to check out a couple of tunes using this gear you can judge for yourself. Innocence (laid back guitar rock) and Lilith (Piano/Electronica with live drums)

Here are the sound clips comparing the different pres if you're feeling geeky. The BlueTube Drive 75 clip is with the Drive knob at 75% and the MP20 IDSS 75 is with the IDSS knob at 75%. I used an MXL 2001 mic with Audio-Technica mic cable on a cheap Aria acoustic guitar played patiently over and over again by a good friend. Each pre is running directly into my Delta 1010.

Aphex 207

ART Pro Channel

EH 12AY7

Mackie 1642VLZ

Presonus BlueTube

Presonus BT Drive 75%

Presonus MP20

Presonus MP20 IDSS 75%

[hammertime]

Thank you. I've wanted to read a review like that for a while.

[KennyLusk]

8th Note, this is really great information. Thanks for taking the time to write it all up. You da man!

[alba359]

Thanks 8th note, very much appreciated. Sincerely, Don

[Radioaction]

Yeah thanks alot man. I just bought the Blue Tube and it was good to hear what someone else had done with it.

Scott

[vvv]

Thanks for the effort!

[hammertime]

After listening to all the pre's, my first impression is that the only one that really stands out is the 12ay7. I don't know if any of the others were really all that much better than the mackie (granted I'm listening on 30 dollar multimedia speakers). It seems like you could fiddle with the eq and get a perfectly adequate sound with any of these pre's, which is what I've found listening on the listening sessions site. I definitely want to pick one of these EH units up, but I'm sort of concerned about the build quality.

[8th_note]

Thanks for listening to the files, Hammer. Interesting observation about the 12AY7 because on my system it doesn't particularly stand out compared to the Pro Channel.

Regarding the build quality of the EH, all I can say is mine has worked flawlessly. I didn't experience the problems others have talked about.

I did have one issue that's worth noting, I guess. When I hooked it up to my sound card it hummed like a mofo. I happened to plug it into one of the channels I had set to +4 and it turns out that on the Delta card the +4 setting is unbalanced (the -10 setting is balanced). I thought the thing was defective, contacted EH and they gave me a return auth. #. Fortunately before I sent it back I figured out that what my sound card was doing and when I changed the input to -10 the hum went away.

[Catoogie]

It's official, I can't hear shit!!! At least not enough of a difference between any of those clips to truly make a difference. I'm sure if I spent enough time comparing them to one another or if someone pointed out the differences I may be able to but nothing about those were drastically different. That solidifies my point that, that kinda shit does not matter.

[BobbyRay]

When I click on the links posted I get this: The page cannot be displayed

What am I doing wrong?

[workshed]

I noticed very subtle differences between the pres as well, but to me the Presonus MP20 stood out a little more, followed by the EH 12AY7. Steve, I'd like to hear the MP20 after you did the Burr-Brown upgrades, too. Thanks for putting this up, it's a great resource to have!

-Bret

[;ivlunsdystf]

I think most of the apparent EH pre "build quality" complaints are coming from people who are unknowingly neglecting to use a true balanced input on their mixer. Once the balance issue is clarified things seem to work fine.

Cool experiment.

I am going to record my next project with two mics, two pres simultaneously on all sources and see what's REALLY going on with all these gadgets.

[8th_note]

When I click on the links posted I get this: The page cannot be displayed

I'm not sure what's going on because it works OK for me. Try right clicking on the file and choose the "Save Target As" command (assuming you're on a PC). It should download to wherever you tell your computer to put it.

[KennyLusk]

works ok for me.

[brokemusician]

Won't work for me either