soundhaspriority wrote:

Let's not argue. Now, what have you got for me, in the way of equipment that
has an attractive sound, not by accuracy, but some subtle manipulation of
the signal, ie., transformer coupled stages, or which strives for "tube-like
sound" ?

Lots of stuff. Hundreds of different preamps and microphones. All kinds
of great stuff. Everything from old Neve copies on up to more transparent
preamps like the Great River and John Hardy transformer-input types. Then
stuff like the Mercury and Manley preamps that have sounds of their own,
mostly due to the input transformers they choose. Also boxes like the UA
reissues which model the sounds of classic devices.

In the case of microphones, there is everything from old U47s, all of which
sound totally different because of the way they ages, new U87s, which are
consistent but very peaky, RCA 77s, RCA 44s, Beyer M-500s and other ribbons,
down to the lowly RE-20 which is probably the most useful vocal mike made.
Then there are detours on things like the Audio-Technica AT4047 which clearly
is an attempt to model a particular (very peaky) sound but which is actually
more versatile than it appears because the response changes off-axis enough
that you can get all sorts of different sounds from different positioning.

I probably have about 200 "colored" microphones in the closet here in the
studio. Most of them sound different. You use the one whose coloration
suits the job.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."