I’ve read a number of articles recently concerning the effect that different quality of recording gear has on the final recording and most seem to be written from the point of view of someone defending poor quality equipment on the basis that relative to the cost the increased quality is minimal and therefore not worth paying for.  Other positions put forward are that in the grand scheme of things the pre-amp is not as important as, say, the quality of the microphones.

This latter position is a difficult one to answer. There are so many elements in the recording “chain” how do you rank them in terms of importance?  I have to admit that I actually don’t know, but to my mind (and I’m not the techie at 4 Part Music) it seems a bit silly to use the best quality microphones and then a poor quality mic pre amp or low quality cabling.

Obviously, as with most things, it usually comes down to budget.  I’m not going to begin to offer advice or promote certain products above others, mostly because I am not an expert on every type of hardware currently available.  Our view at 4 Part Music has always been to work with the best quality equipment we can and if we are considering any new piece of recording gear we always carry out a number of tests with it before purchasing (where possible).

As things currently stand we have four 8 channel microphone pre amps from two different manufacturers (for those interested these are 2 RME Micstasy units and 2 Millennia Media HV-3Rs).  The Micstasy’s are by no means cheap units but they are considerably cheaper than the HV-3Rs.  Quality wise, there is a difference as we have discovered by using identical equipment and then swapping the pre-amps. However, the difference is very very very slight and quite honestly you would only know if you compared one with the other.  Nevertheless, the HV-3Rs do, in our opinion and teamed with our other equipment, give a slightly better sound.

You may well ask, if thats the case why do we have 2 Micstasys as well – why not just have either 2 HV-3Rs or 4 HV-3Rs.  Well firstly, 4 HV-3Rs would be quite expensive but more importantly they are much heavier and as a result much less portable.  If we are recording a large choir or orchestra, this is not a factor, However, sometimes we record very simply podcasts or audio books where quite honestly the quality difference really doesn’t matter to the same extent.

This brings me to the crux of the argument though. What is the definition of better?  Well to my ears there is more detail from the HV-3Rs and the sound is slightly clearer.  Of course all of this improvement could easily then be lost or destroyed in post production. So, buy way of conclusion in my opion, yes the microphone pre-amp does make a difference and the additional costs are worth it, BUT only if you then make similar quality decisions for the rest of your recording gear.  And the thing is, because the quality difference is so slight between one pre amp and another, you could lose all the benefit of the better pre amp by substituting something as seemingly insignificant as a cable.