Wow! I heard very interesting differences. Yes, it's worth it. The Empress brought out the highs and related definition, very clear. The others had like these warm spacious sonic dimensions, each a bit different, but somehow those warmer darker preamps added a magic to the track. For me, the melody synth line sat better in the mix with the warmer preamps, brought the song together.
Thank you for the comparison and your great Content ☺️ i think when it comes down to Transformer „Sound“ …its all about Vibe & Feeling at the End. My Favorite and Winner here is your: AEA RPQ500 🎉
It's so weird ... I'm in love with the idea of transformers but when it comes down to pres, I may have to agree with you on the AEA RPQs even though they don't have any iron. Everything just sounds so good through them and then that curve EQ ... woof!
Oh okay i see, no Transformer…just JFet 👍 Maybe they sound so gorgeous because of their generated harmonics 🌈✨thank you for your reply. ps. And yes they sound so good that i had to hide my wallet (for at least a weak) 😃 …but i‘m happy for you ☺️
They were so surprising! I got them with the AEA R88 mk2 ribbon mic (which sounds amazing thru RPQs ... thru anything really but RPQs even more so) because I've always wanted a bad-ass mic but then I moved into a noisy, untreated room so the mic went but the pre's stayed because that Jfet makes everything sound good, even compared to Avedis and Electrodyne stuff. As far as high end preamps go, they are ultra affordable. You can get the rack dual channel version for like $1200 new if you know where to look (and if you don't, shoot me a message!).
Honestly, I didn't hear a difference. But actually I would've expected something like "without ANY preamps and just using line levels, my vintage synth required +20db gain in post-processing, my space-age new gear +5db and with any pre-amp, this went down to -5db to avoid clipping". That's why I would apply a pre-amp to start with, to get a cleaner signal with less noise. Not because I wanted some "taint" or "warmer sound" or whatever.
Most synths are line level so you wouldn't need a preamp to add gain. But with digital recording, it's not a problem to use boost +20db in post-processing or +5db or whatever so no point in testing that if that's all you're interested in. But even with clean signal, not all "clean" is the same. My SSL Big Six sounds noticeably better than my Allen & Heath MixWizard and neither are tone machines.
The electrodyne is the best followed by the Avedis. Even only from my LG Oled TV speakers they sound so different to each other. Audient sounds cheap like focusrite lol.
The Electrodynes are my fave as well. I had to send mine back though because of minor issues like crackly pots & burnt out leds. What pres are you rocking in your rig?
From my experiment ways preamps make synths and keys thicker sounding. I take it from the perspective of synths and keys are already sampled based even when they’re sampled from high quality old synths and pianos. I think again it fattens the sound when you’re recording through interfaces. Like me personally I used an old Mackie mixer as a pre for the keyboard players that had a Nord and man it to me made the Nord come through without much eq or anything.
Outboard studio gear really does something subtle but significant I think to the sound. Especially if you buy into the old recording adage of how pro quality is really a collection of small % improvements. I badly want to sell my Avedis MD7s but I can't because they make everything I run through them sound better in a 3d, classy way that no pedal or plugin can do.
The only one I heard a difference in was the AEA RPQ500..... it sounded creamy, warm, more depth (whatever adjective you want to use) in the high mids and low mids to my ear.
Your control preamp was high quality, so I didn't hear any difference with the other preamps. But I didn't download the files, just listened to the video. From my personal experience, quality preamps don't do much for synth sounds in general. Especially since we are often adjusting filters & parameters on our synth instruments. DI boxes can work good for synths but primarily in live performance applications. And in those situations, getting a quality DI does make a difference.
Yes, agreed. I don't think preamps are that noticeable on synths until you start driving into them and many pres aren't built for that. Which preamps do you have or are you just going line-in into a mixer/interface?
Dumb question but how do you actually connect the synth to the Cranborne 500R8? Do you connect the audio output of the synth into the insert on the back of the 500R8?
The age-old question. I bought the RNP stereo preamp w/ a JDI. I couldn't tell a difference. Sold them and bought a line-level Speck summing mixer which provides enough gain for synth's. That said... a "colored"/tube preamp would probably make a difference. RNP was too plain/clean.
Yeah for sure, the RNP & JDI isnt meant for saturation or color. The JDI solves noise problems from me on gtr pedals but I agree with you that color pres are best for synths.
