Roy W. Rising wrote:
(hank alrich) wrote:
Roy W. Rising wrote:
"mcnews" wrote:
guess that does make sense.
i'll head over to atlanta pro audio next week for a demo.
A "Fool and his money" are soon to be parted. It's sad.
Roy, the guy wants to drop $900 on a mic. I ask you again, have _you_
ever used an RNP? I have, and compared it to both low end (Mackie
original 1202), middling (Mackie Onyx) and very good (Millennia and
Great River MP2-MH) preamps. The Mackies were not in the running, at
all. Neither are the pres in my A&H 2200.
Why spend twice the cost of a decent preamp on a mic that one will then
connect to a truly mediocre preamp? Please explain how that makes sense.
An RNP is half his budget. I may have saved him almost half a grand.
When you were mixing for bigtime broadcast, how many Mackies were in the
suite? How many Behringers?
I guess it comes down to this: What, *exactly*, will a high-end
preamplifier do that the chips in lower cost mixers will not? I do not
refer to the added bells and whistles plus booster and/or line amplifier
that comes with the package ... just the preamplifier. Nor do I refer to a
few dB difference in noise or dynamic range, or a few microseconds
difference in transient response.
Run an RNP alongside a Mackie and I doubt you will miss the difference.
There are situations where a "few dB" of noise makes a big difference,
as with mics like the Beyer M160's, which have a teensy little output,
and which sometimes want more gain than is to be found in _any_ of the
low priced spread pres, unless you wanted the sound of fries along with
the source. Even the MD441 and the RE20 often benefit from more gain
than I want to ask from my Mackie or A&H.
What I get personally, even in non demanding situations, from the better
preamps is a greater sense of the reality of the source, something akin
to a three-dimensional reality instead of merely getting a
two-dimensional representation.
I have suggested to several friends who've asked me what mic to get, and
who were budgeting two or three times the price of an RNP for that mic,
that they get an RNP first, and then see how they feel about their mics.
So far every one of those has come back with sincere appreciation for
the advice. One of them is now, two years later, starting to get some
better mics. The others no longer feel they need better mics.
--
ha
"Iraq" is Arabic for "Vietnam"