james of tucson wrote:

Between the few-hundred-dollar prosumer preamps and the
thousand-dollar-and-up preamps, it is largely a matter of opinion
as to the relative merits of the various products.

Until one uses them across a wide variety of sources in a broad range of
environments in situations where one's livlihood is one the line. Then
the relative merits of the higher grade kit become obvious, just like
the differences between some consumer chainsaw and a pro saw become
obvious when the timber gets large and one will spend all day falling
it.

As for nothing being wrong with Mackie and Behringer mixers, that dpends
laregely one one's value for "wrong". Note that Tonebarge uses neither
the preamps nor the EQ's in his Mackie. There might be a reason for
that. I appreciate my little 1202 and it has paid for itself many times
over, but satisfactory performance depends on gain staging that could
well be called peculiar vis a vis more capable mixers. And lots of
"prosumers" have even less concept of gain staging than they have budget
for recording gear.

There seems to exist in the hopeful mind of the "prosumer"* a desire to
pretend that whatever cheap stuff has been purchased is fully equivalent
to the finest gear. In this case ignorance does not often result in
bliss; it often results in the desire to throw more money at more cheap
gear hoping that this time the advertising claims are true.


* A bull**** marketing term designed to help folks throw away money in
their "professional bedroom", overlooking that the acoustical
environment in which one records could be a very important factor in
one's results, and that fine environments most often cost pretty serious
money.


--
ha