Re: mic recommendations; champagne recording on a beer budget

["Dave Trenkel" <improv@peak.org>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "RICK WALKER" <looppool@cruzio.com>
To: "LOOPERS DELIGHT (posting)" <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 17, 2007 3:27 AM
Subject: Re: mic recommendations; champagne recording on a beer budget


> Thanks for that cool technique, Dave,

You're welcome, it's been something I've been playing with a bunch lately, 
and one example of why you might possibly want to use other patterns.
>
> I"m no expert,  just another intelligent home studio guy who has had a 
>lot 
> of experience with state of the art microphones
> because I did hundreds of studio sessions in the 80's and early 90's 
> (there's none in my area any more,  at least for me).
>
> If I may,  what is a 'true'  mic -preamp and why is the ART not one, by 
> the way?

I'm no tube expert, but from what I understand, the ART is essentially  a 
solid state preamp with a starved-plate tube distortion circuit, meaning 
that it runs on a low voltage and doesn't fully drive the tubes. The EH 
preamp I mentioned uses 2 tubes as part of the preamplifier circuit, and 
they are running at full voltage. This is just based on what I understood 
of 
what I was told by an EE friend of mine, please feel free to correct me if 
I 
misunderstood. I have both the ART and EH pres, and while the ART sounds 
pretty good if you don't run it into distortion, the EH sounds amazing, 
brings out a level of detail in any mic I've run through it, and seems to 
de-emphasize the high-end harshness of cheap chinese condenser mics.

My EE friend is on a mission to debunk the "tube warmth" myth, he rails 
against the dozens of products on the market that through a tube into a 
circuit, sometimes with an LED behind it so that it looks like it's 
glowing, 
and then proclaims how "warm" it sounds. He claims that you can design 
tube 
circuits that are very transparent sounding, and I'd agree that the EH is 
pretty detailed and transparent sounding.

I didn't mean to dis the ART pre's, they are cheap and sound good, I have 
a 
pair that I use on almost every session, I just wanted to point out that 
there are other, better, "tubier" options for mot much more $.