Ok, I got the return label I requested (see below) and am done playing around with mic preamps. I will write more about this insane return experience once it is resolved but the guy (who runs a whole ass company) I’m dealing with is either a nice guy with zero phone manners (he’s a boomer, so possible) or a complete asshole, so I’m still being vague about what exactly I was testing, but I don’t think it matters that much.
After doing a ton of testing with a vintage American style input/output transformer preamp vs the Spectrasonic pre (input transformer only) I use on everything, I arrived at about the same place everyone else here has
I tried:
My own voice through a mic I am used to
Extended range stuff like drums and acoustic instruments through mics I am used to
Listening to music you know through them
I normally used tube ldc and sdc mics I was used to but also tried a ribbon and dynamic. I listened both in solo and then in a track I’m already working on, so I got to hear the preamp in and out of context.
I didn’t level match after the fact, but I did gain match within a couple 1/10ths of a db with a mic level tone generator and daw metering. I had them running relatively hot with the output fader a down as I would normally, but not to where it was outwardly distorted. As a result, there were certain peaks that were a tiny bit louder on this or that preamp but they averaged out to be really close. I think there might have been a spot or two where I did level match for whatever reason. I also used this fancy Emo mic splitter to send each mic to each preamp where necessary.
There have been a couple times in the past where changing out a preamp did improve the source I was using, but that only happened when I had a Chandler TG2 for a little while, which had a distinct color that I didn’t like when it was apparent. I’ve also had issues with other preamps that have weird gain staging where just putting a condenser mic near a source might require a pad.
Mic preamps totally do make a difference, but once you get to a certain level of quality whether that difference is better or more flattering might be hard to tell throughout a whole song. Sometimes it was more apparent on certain passages and not others.
It’s also way easy to trick yourself. Once I was driving myself crazy and realized that when I had just copied and pasted a track I was comparing signal recording from the same input. Normally you can put them through a frequency analyzer and see slight differences with what frequencies are loudest, but mostly they are right next to each other, though not always.
Also, listening to music through them seems flawed in that it seems like that would favor more neutral preamps. I think John Hardy recommended doing that in one of his papers but maybe it’s better to do with unmastered stuff? I run things through a 1073 or other preamp for line level 2-track or subgroup processing all the time w/o cooking it and colorful stuff like Neve type things are more hit or miss than the Spectra stuff, which is a vintage thing but a little more neutral. You can hear a difference there too.
But gain staging is a whole other thing - if you have preamps that have a ton of gain then those might be best on hungry mics, or if you might have preamps that you can crank on close sources w/o a pad, which can also be useful. As I understand it, old tube preamps were real hot but engineers would use barrel attenuators or whatever as needed, which is part of the reason some old records sound like they do.
Anyways, I feel the same about them that I did before in that I’d prefer to just find one preamp that works for everything and stick with it. I would err on getting the best pre possible but ofc if you’re recording a whole band at a time paying close to a thousand dollar per channel is an insane thing to do.
I still think for the money and features you get, Dakings are probably the best you can do, but I never appreciated mine because it was the first ‘nice’ preamp I had after a Midas mixer. But I really miss that variable high pass filters that goes way, way low, so you can keep it invisible and still save some headroom. When I need more channels I will get a pair of the EA pres since the low and high shelf sounds super useful.
CAPIs are also a great deal, especially if you can roll your own, but to me API style preamps are even more colored than Neve stuff. They are the only preamps I can usually guess on in those stupid shootout threads on other sites - just listen for the one that seems to be missing a little bottom.
Also, with the 500 series stuff - I like API and Spectra because they are console preamps that are designed to be super light with a low current draw, so when they made the switch to 500 they didn’t need to make a bunch of compromises to make it work for that format, at least until you want to add eq.
Maybe others can comment, but I wouldn’t expect some big ass tube or rack pre to shrink down to a tiny 500 series module without some compromise.
llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Thu Mar 12, 2026 6:23 pmI bought something on Reverb and the company sent me the wrong item (which turned out to be a whole thing so I am being vague), so I had a fancy 500 series preamp to test out for a couple days. By the time I aligned everything with test tones and mic splitters and stuff I could have been well on my way to tracking something.
There was hardly a lick of difference between my cheapish Spectra mic preamp and the other one. I couldn’t even test it in overdrive because the other pre was already so gainy with a tube condenser mic on vocals. At the end I saved the session and made a note warning against going down that rabbit hole again.
But maybe if I just add dithering into my practice
It could dissuade me from worrying about it further, but I could at least give it a try. Just not a priority vs actually finishing stuff.