Post
by electricskychurch » Sat Oct 18, 2008 12:14 am
having my own studio recording equipment for several years and "growing" it regularly (waiting for another place to install my recording studio) and having worked in a big audio / video company ( on top of 2 pro audio shops in Paris as well) selling and renting pro audio/ video gear as well as installing recording studios and post production studios like for well known french artists or just recording studio companies , TV's, radios, cinema producers ( like luc besson )... among other things, like audio mastering, servicing of pro audio equipment, importing some of the best pro audio brands in france from other countries, like the Euphonix mixing desks for those who know them (maybe the finest Digital mixing desks in the world and very expensive , thousands $ ) or some of the finest high end digital gear like the PRISM AD/DA converters ...etc , and that company was the first in France to import all the equipment to create DVD',s installing it and teaching people to use it to create / authoring the DVD 's you can find in the shops, like pioneer ... at that time the professional DVD burner was for this sytem was 15000 euros !!!
all that to say that some of the equipment you listed is maybe not the best quality / price or simply maybe not just great .
i don't know their latest products but ART has not been making preamps i would have bought a few years ago even for low budget (but i heard they were releasing other ones actualy) .
i would certainly have advised people to buy TL Audio 5000 series elements (Ivory serie) or mindprint for example, for people not wanting to spend much money.
for more money, there are tons of equipment !
apart from the brands you named, there are Avalon (it seems angus use some to record his guitar) , Millenia, universal audo (with nice reissues of well known 60's and 70's compressors , limiters and preamps ( 1176, LA2A, LA3A ...), TUBE TECK (danish if i remember well, tube based comp , eq, pre's), TL Audio, Chandler LTD (reissuing some the ABBEY ROAD preamps, eq, comp/ lim... i use the dual preamp TG2 repro of the late 60's abbey road mixing desk preamps), DW FEARN , manley, EAR , GML, Groove tubes ,shadow hills, Trident, DBX, crane song ,hardy , lavry...
as you were speaking of Neve, there are some Neve clones out there (even some you can build as a kit) but never tried them (if i remeember well , a few on this forum use some, among which Georges if i remember well ) .
presonus little blue tube preamps and other entry level gear in the blue serie they had several years ago but i was not a big fan of them more than that (although i rememeber it was not some bad equipment either but more entry budget and it was easy to carry for "travellers" ).
Focusrite has been making some good audio pro gear , depending on what you look for.
Rupert Neve designed some focusrite equipment for a while in the 80's.
Neve and API are great analog gears but you have to know that Neve is above all, well known for the equipment released in the 60's to the mid 70's or so .
the later and actual Neve equipment is not the same except they are reissuing some models of some of their well known series of that era (don't know if they are as good) . very very very expensive, mostly only for big profgessional studios that can afford their pre's , eq's , compressors and mixing desks.
they mad high end recording studio and broadcast audio gear
Api is also reissuing some of their most well known equipment as well as new series and they are great analog audio gears (more affordable than Neve for the pre's, eq's ... but the mixing desks are still quiet expensive).
SSL, are well known for their huge professional recording consoles made from the 80's until now if i remember well .
as Neve mixing desks, it's a very expensive equipment (several hundred thousands $ , like Euphonix) , except they released some cheaper series racks for a while now.
personnaly that might not be what i would head to, i prefer vintage or reissues of some vintage gear for many gears.
SSL is more modern type of gear but is used in many of the biggest recording studios in the world.
presonus digital equipment was not really great from what i remember .
echo audio interface had really bad drivers (especialy for mac computers but it might have changed since a few years).
RME , especialy with nuendo , is some really good equipment (audio cards and converters ) for decent price ; highly recommended !
also, the RME equipment works with several audio/ midi sequencer softwares , like Logic audio pro (what i use, although when i choose from what brand i was going to buy the audio cards from , about 7 years ago logic audio was working a bit better with MOTU audio hardware on macintosh computers , especialy the driver / buffer size ; so , that's what i choose ) , cubase and other softwares ...
MOTU audio hardware is working really well with logic audio pro or other softwares on MAC computers and PC as well if i remember well but for the people working on PC computer better than Mac, i would advise RME .
Apogee is maybe the most well known AD/DA converters brand and has been there for a while, you can find many in recording/ post production studios but they might not be the best converters (but the better ones like Prism sound converters cost the "eyes of the head" as we say in France) when you choose among the best ones in the world but certainly some of the best ones.
i think they also make audio interface cards for a while now.
i don't really know Mytech except it was some "low end " audio interface models for PC computers back then.
Mackie is well known for the Entry prices pro audio analog mixers they spread worldwide and a they might be the best analog mixers in that price category.
they also make digital mixing desk. the first they released , the D8B , was very impresssive in the late 90's but it had some devellopment problems for a while.
i saw AC/DC was working with some mackie digital equipment (was it a X200 ?) in their personnal studio (at leats that's what was in the Press some time ago) .
i think the O2RV2 yamaha released a few years later (early 2000's ) was better (for its sound quality) than the D8B and there are others companies building some.
for the mics, there are so many out there but some are well known as they were legendary and most of the time, you understand why when you try them .
the mic is certainly the most important element of the recording processs , as much as a speaker is in the diffusion process, so it really depends on what you want to record, want it to sound ...
the brands you name are really good ones (except i never had the opportunity to hear some peluso mics ).
one other thing , as usual, some reisssues may sound quiet far from the original ones unfortunately !
also , beware of telefunken, if i remember well, there was a strange story not so far ago, like one of their mic that someone unmounted and discovered with surprise it was just a re-branded chinese mic !
SM57 are great all purpose instruments mics and work very well for guitars and drums among other things.
personnaly , i never liked Mackie monitors , i prefer Genelec ( i have some late 90's 1031A and a pair of NHT pro A20 ) or Dynaudio , ADAM...
KRk is well known and some like them.
Yamaha NS10's (i had some) have been proximity monitors for most of the recording studios for most of the 80's and early 90's (not for their beautiful sound but more for a sort of reference tone .
from what i knew from m-audio or event, stay way !
the yamaha they released in the early 2000's (MSP7 or 10 if i remember well ), were correct value for the money .
