[Scott Dorsey]

In article ,
Phil Allison wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

Record a distant piano in a quiet room and it will become very very obvious
which preamp is quieter and which one is less colored.


** The OP will need a damn quiet room.

Rode NT1As have a claimed self noise of 5dB A weighted.

When you have mostly 1/f noise, it's easy to get a great-looking
specification on the datasheet by using A-weighting. But that does
not make it actually quiet.

You're right about needing a damn quiet room, because the room noise is
likely also worse at low frequencies.

Well below that of anything but an anechoic chamber.

Above 1kc, sure.

I'll say that the piano test tells you about a lot more than just noise.
It tells you about how subjectively offensive the particular noise
spectrum is, and it tells you a whole lot about linearity. You should be
able to hear the piano note decay down slowly and hear room reverberations
well below the noise floor, and the tone should not change as they decay.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."