$5 mic pre vs. $1500 mic pre... can you hear the difference?

Sloan said:
Ok, someone make a shitload of those $5 preamps and sell them for $10. I might buy some.
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I might, but... it'll take a bit more than $10. First, that price covers components, not jacks, knobs, or boxes - and getting things studio-ready (Neutrik jacks, solid enclosure, good knobs, accurate gain measurements) takes work and time.

If I cranked these fuckers out in an hour, and only spent five bucks on parts, I'd be making less than minimum wage - and when you get as in-depth and anal about these things as I do, there's no chance in hell this can be called unskilled labor. Making the circuit, tweaking the components to within reasonable (<2%) errors, and assembling the actual physical box is a few hours' work. There's also inevitable tool wear, and I still haven't kicked my seemingly hopeless addiction to food, so if I were to build these for others maybe 20% of the cost would actually wind up being parts. It's no fun, it's time-consuming, it's a little dangerous (studio-quality metal enclosures take work)... so I'd have to assume a significantly higher price if I were to sell them.

Jeff
 
It's a $5 preamp if you build it yourself and don't charge yourself for your time. It's $5 worth of components if you leave it as they left it. $5 circuit is more accurate. However, most people don't buy perfboard globs with batteries and jacks hanging off.

It still sounds godly.

Jeff
 
I'd be interested in a rack version w/ 4 to 8 of these assuming there would be any way to power them via cable and not batteries. If you decide to build anything like this drop me a message.
 
I already said that it was possible. Not a good idea, but a feasible one. I'll have an announcement up if I get a few of these together at some point.

Jeff
 
Fuck it dude, I'd buy one for $60 in a hot second if it sounded killer and came with the JBroll seal of approval
 
I guess the batteries costs more then 5 bucks! :p

and I think one should put it in some decent box.... or I guess it's going to be noisy with many tracks...
 
It's a great preamp, and if you build it with good components and use batteries it'll be damn near silent. I had mine just in perfboard for a while, and after I butchered another power supply to see how the noise was it literally dropped between 30 and 40 decibels. It wasn't a bad power supply, either - I also used a good computer power supply to check afterwards, and its own noise is obscenely low. What's more, it's fairly consistent when it's there, so it might even be possible to record tracks of 'silence' and cancel the noise out that way. This is a beautiful fucking circuit - it exists solely to make people like us go nuts.

Jeff
 
JBroll said:
It's a great preamp, and if you build it with good components and use batteries it'll be damn near silent. I had mine just in perfboard for a while, and after I butchered another power supply to see how the noise was it literally dropped between 30 and 40 decibels. It wasn't a bad power supply, either - I also used a good computer power supply to check afterwards, and its own noise is obscenely low. What's more, it's fairly consistent when it's there, so it might even be possible to record tracks of 'silence' and cancel the noise out that way. This is a beautiful fucking circuit - it exists solely to make people like us go nuts.

Jeff
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So I'm assuming the high point of the design is it's extremely transparent and faith reproduction of what goes in due to be extremely simple? Could you give us some examples with some guitars and/or vocals?

My main concern is how a blaring 100w head sounds through a 57 or alikes then into the pre, then again it wouldn't hurt to make one. :lol:
 
devouredremains said:
I've heard good things about the sc-1 diy preamp from fivefish audio. It's a transformerless solid state design. I think i'm going to build a few in the new year.

http://fivefish.net/diy/
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I'm not sure that'd be worth it in the end.

100 bucks a channel + rack + power + transformer +misc.

You could easily get a nice Focusrite Octopre for less then that.

I suppose if the quality of the pre is comparable to something 10x what it's worth, then I'm sure it's worth it.
 
I'll be getting around to it, but honestly samples of this thing are a little silly because you won't hear it. I'm still in finals hell, but I'll eventually have a picstory of building one of these fuckers, and some clips, if I ever get done with this shit. It would also be better for someone with nicer gear to give it a try, I might be arranging for that sooner or later.

Jeff
 
JBroll said:
I'll eventually have a picstory of building one of these fuckers
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Oh please do, that would be great. I've been thinking of building one for the hell of it even though I really don't need one. A pic story would make the operation less painful, as I'm not all that handy though I know basic electronics and can hold a welding iron the correct way. At least most of the time.
 
I will start ordering parts soon and trying to complete one myself then I still do some a/b/c tests with my MOTU 828 and M-audio mobile pre.
 
Necromancer197666 said:
I'm not sure that'd be worth it in the end.

100 bucks a channel + rack + power + transformer +misc.

You could easily get a nice Focusrite Octopre for less then that.

I suppose if the quality of the pre is comparable to something 10x what it's worth, then I'm sure it's worth it.
Click to expand...

I thought this thread was about DIY preamps? Not everybody is into DIY for cost cutting. Some people like doing this stuff for fun. :Smug:

Also, nobody said you had to use their power supply or racking.

And would you honestly expect a $5 or $100 preamp to sound like something costing $10,000 to justify building it? They will sound good but what are you expecting from all of this?

On a serious note, if these cheap DIY pres were as good as $1500+ preamps every studio would have racks of them and every company would be building them or modified versions of them. This schematic is nothing new and has been available for a long time!

The SC-1 preamps are supposed to sound incredibly good and I've often heard them get compared to the FMR Audio RNP. Keep in mind this is from things I've read. The only way to know if you will like it is to build it. And I believe i'm going to. I'll post the results of the build when it's done.

Also if your into building for fun and want some very nice circuits using transformers check out http://www.seventhcircleaudio.com/
 
devouredremains said:
On a serious note, if these cheap DIY pres were as good as $1500+ preamps every studio would have racks of them and every company would be building them or modified versions of them. This schematic is nothing new and has been available for a long time!
Click to expand...

Right, which is exactly why I don't use Tube Screamers, C4, or any mics other than SM57s. Nile doesn't use Tube Screamers, so I don't see why I should - only a n00b couldn't sound good without one. And C4? Gimme a fucking break - compressors are overrated anyway. Come on, who uses that shit? Andy Sheep? Gimme a fucking break, if he wants to sound good he should drop that digitized Pro Tools shit and go back to tape. And fuck those other mics... Jesus recorded the Bible with an SM57, everything else is for fucking posers.

See, you're forgetting a number of things. A lot of people arbitrarily shy away from op-amps - there's a ton of money in saying that discrete circuits sound better and op-amps sound bad (my ass), so people go for other oddball contraptions and pay top dollar for them because they're fucking bizarre. Then, there's that whole personal taste thing - preamps are often marketed with their own sound and contribution to the recording, and while this is a good thing in a lot of cases it's also very helpful to have something that'll do nothing more than make shit sound the same at a different volume. Finally... a lot of studios do have this kind of thing in them. This is a very basic op-amp circuit, and THE DIFFERENCE is that this op-amp is probably one of the best that could possibly be made for this application. Yes, this is an old schematic, but the way it's given it's not a common preamp because people like to cheap out on parts. I'd say that you've heard this circuit before, and I'd be right except for one little detail - you haven't heard the circuit itself because it's frighteningly transparent when done right. Circuits like this do cost people gobs of fucking money. What's more, when you're only paying for components you're spending a lot less than you would be for a 'professionally-made' box - hardest audio circuits I've ever dealt with couldn't cost $100 in components without some serious splurging. Most companies do utilize some sort of op-amp stage in some of their products, this is just the cream of the crop - so in addition to talking out of your ass with 'Hit Factory didn't have these, they're not that good', you're wrong on the second count.

Jeff
 
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