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[Ron Roberts]

Amateur/Hobbyist/musician here looking for insight on the difference between investing in good mic-pres like the Neve 1073OPX or Rupert Neve Designs RMP-D8 or Audient ASP880...
   OR....
just investing in a better board that has high-quality mic-pres like the Midas M32.
There is not alot of difference in cost. But with the Midas M32 you get a whole mixing board....

Goal is gear that can be used for live-sound P.A. and for recording with a DAW.
Anyone have any thoughts?

thank you,
Ron

[Matthias McCready]

Amateur/Hobbyist/musician here looking for insight on the difference between investing in good mic-pres like the Neve 1073OPX or Rupert Neve Designs RMP-D8 or Audient ASP880...
   OR....
just investing in a better board that has high-quality mic-pres like the Midas M32.
There is not alot of difference in cost. But with the Midas M32 you get a whole mixing board....

Goal is gear that can be used for live-sound P.A. and for recording with a DAW.
Anyone have any thoughts?

thank you,
Ron

I am not saying there is not a difference in preamps, however, there are things that will be readily more apparent (in rough orders of importance):

1. Musician skill
2. Parts + Arrangement
3. Instrument/Gear Quality/Condition
4. Proper Gain Staging
5. Mic Choice
6. Mic Placement
7. Space/room the mics are in

I often bring tracks from live back to the monitors at home, the above are all readily apparent, the console and its preamps on the other end? Not so much.

I have brought tracks home recorded from all sorts of desks from a DiGiCo Quantum with 32-bit Preamps down the lowly Behringer X32 and the preamps have never been a deciding factor in how the tracks sounded.

At work we tried Neve vs our DiGiCo preamps, and did not find them to be worth the extra cost - but your mileage may vary.

Modern mic preamps are extremely clean, and are quite detailed, even on an M32 - if it is colour or saturation you are after there are many ways to add that after things are tracked.

I am not saying there is no difference, but I would spend the money on something that is not a subtle difference, such as nicer mics.

[Brian Jojade]

I can't remember the last event I worked at where someone brought external preamps along.  Maybe in the studio they matter. Live? nope.

[Bob Faulkner]

Don't worry about the mic-pres, especially for live sound.  What Matthias McCready stated above is far more important.  For studio work, the mic-pres may be important, but that may be based on microphone choice.  If the mic-pres are that important, you may want to look at a separate console for the recording of shows.

[John Roberts {JR}]

You will experience a bigger difference between microphones than preamps. Modern console preamps are competent.

JR

[Chris Hindle]

Mic Pre's are absolutely the LAST thing that will affect your recordings.
If EVERYTHING else is perfect (not likely) maybe you will hear an A / B difference in 2 modern Pre's.
As others have said, talent, mic choice, placement, room effects, and bleed will make  more difference than Pre's.
Put your hard earned cash where it will do the most good.
I'd probably start with great Cans or a nice set of Genelec's.
Chris.

[Scott Bolt]

Mic Pre's are absolutely the LAST thing that will affect your recordings.
If EVERYTHING else is perfect (not likely) maybe you will hear an A / B difference in 2 modern Pre's.
As others have said, talent, mic choice, placement, room effects, and bleed will make  more difference than Pre's.
Put your hard earned cash where it will do the most good.
I'd probably start with great Cans or a nice set of Genelec's.
Chris.

I am saving myself some typing here as Chris said almost exactly what I was going to type .

As for the live sound, FOH speakers make the biggest difference.  All current digital mixers have very good to outstanding preamp circuits with near perfect linearity and a ridiculously low noise floor.

[Craig Hauber]

I am saving myself some typing here as Chris said almost exactly what I was going to type .

As for the live sound, FOH speakers make the biggest difference.  All current digital mixers have very good to outstanding preamp circuits with near perfect linearity and a ridiculously low noise floor.

Even lowly analog cheapies have better IC preamp implementations than we had on larger format desks back in the 80's.  Lower noise floor at high gain. 

Just having even very high quality PA mains in the same space as the microphones will affect the sound far more than any discernible preamp differences.  Adding wedges makes it even worse.  Throw headset wireless into that mix and I wish preamps were all there was to worry about!
In that environment I haven't even really been bothered to see if there's a noticeable difference between the X32 and supposedly "better" M32 preamps.

[Scott Bolt]

Amateur/Hobbyist/musician here looking for insight on the difference between investing in good mic-pres like the Neve 1073OPX or Rupert Neve Designs RMP-D8 or Audient ASP880...
   OR....
just investing in a better board that has high-quality mic-pres like the Midas M32.
There is not alot of difference in cost. But with the Midas M32 you get a whole mixing board....

Goal is gear that can be used for live-sound P.A. and for recording with a DAW.
Anyone have any thoughts?

thank you,
Ron

Hi Ron,

After re-reading your original post, I have a few questions.

1) What is the situation you are working in (bars, venue with FOH speakers but no mixer, playing in a garage, wanting to provide sound for a local band, etc)?

2) What PA gear do you already have?

3)  What is your budget to upgrade your current stock of PA equipment?

To re-iterate, no matter what your answers are to the above questions, the answer will not be to spend money on preamps .

If you can answer these questions though, I think you will find that the people here can definitely provide you with very valuable and great advice on what you should spend your money on.

[Mark Scrivener]

I can't remember the last event I worked at where someone brought external preamps along.  Maybe in the studio they matter. Live? nope.

Even in the studio, preamps are extremely low on the sonic impact list. Yes, if you have a mic that needs tons of gain or wants to see a specific impedance, then the pre might be important, but there are ways around that with devices like the FET head or Cloud lifter. And these aren't mics one would typically use live.

As for color, as others stated, there are plenty of ways to add that. Most "cheap" preamps built into a digital live console (X32, etc) or a $100 desktop audio interface are clean and detailed enough for live or studio.

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