How important are good preamps/interface for recording?

N

ninja9

Inspired
I am recording an album next week and plan to go direct with the Ultra for a lot of the sounds. The producer will have some nice mic preamps, but I'd like to record some tracks at home if possible. However I only have an Mbox 2, and was wondering whether you guys think this setup can yield professional results?

Would digital s/pdif be the way to go, or will the analog pres on the Mbox 2 cut it? Or do I need to bite the bullet and get my hands on a professional preamp?

Any advice much appreciated.
 
Would people recommend something like the Apoggee Duet so I could record at 96kHz? Mbox only does 48kHz.
 
Axe-Fx does "only" 48kHz. It suffices. Analog out works also well.
 
Thanks Yek. But would the Axe-FX's analog outs recorded at 96kHz sound more professional than if they were recorded at 48kHz, or is the difference negligible? Do you record with your apogee at 48kHz or 96kHz?

Anyone compare an MBox to an Apogee Duet?
 
Apogee uses high-end converters, however, the Duet is not one of their higher end units. The difference between 96 and 48 with those 2 interfaces will most likely be negligible. A "professional" preamp is going to be $1500 and up...same thing with an audio interface.
 
I would keep in mind that a CD is strictly 44/16, and unless you have a great ditherer, it's pretty much truncated by default.
 
There really is no need for a preamp for high quality line level gear like the AxeFx. The purpose of a preamp is to pre-amplify a small signal to line level. Preamps are also used to add "flavor" if you will but why would you do that with an AxeFx. So there is no reason you can't drive a converter directly from the AxeFx. If all you have is budget converters (i.e. less than $1000) you are probably going to do better by going SPDIF or AES from the AxeFx into a Firewire or USB interface. Even at 48kHz. The advantage of doing this is that you preserve the full quality of the AxeFx sound no matter what system is used to play it back. But once you go through a cheap set of ADC then you have forever printed that sound.
 
The AD/DA converters inside the Axe-FX are reportedly of very high quality, better in most cases than what you'd find in a consumer-grade audio interface box, hence there is no advantage to going SPDIF (digital). The best quality signal you're likely to get to your home DAW is from the XLR outs on the Axe-FX; just be aware that they are +6dBu hotter than the 1/4" outputs (both are considered line-level, however).
 
You can certainly get acceptable results using an MBox via line in. The Duet is largely accepted as a better sounding unit however. As for recording at 96k- I noticed a bit more "air" in the recorded sound (very subtle)- hard to describe but the trade off is a very high demand of processing power and disk space. I still very much like the sounds I get at 44.1 and 48 so I keep it in that zone if at all possible.
 
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zslane said:
The AD/DA converters inside the Axe-FX are reportedly of very high quality, better in most cases than what you'd find in a consumer-grade audio interface box, hence there is no advantage to going SPDIF (digital). The best quality signal you're likely to get to your home DAW is from the XLR outs on the Axe-FX; just be aware that they are +6dBu hotter than the 1/4" outputs (both are considered line-level, however).
Click to expand...

If the Axe-FX has better quality converters than the Mbox, wouldn't keeping it digital (s/pdif) be preferable?
 
s/pdif is not really a great interface. Cliff has commented on it several times that no signal is perfectly sync'd at 48 and everything requires some sort of correction to make up for it.
 
The numbers are largely irrelevant.

You can get (hugely expensive at the time) 16bit/44.1khz converters from the late 80's/early 90's that will outperform many of the prosumer 24/96 converters on the market.
The circuitry around the converter is arguably more important than the converter itself.

The Duet is a good product though.
For most people the problem is going to be their own limited experience regarding mixing techniques, not really the gear.
 
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ninja9 said:
If the Axe-FX has better quality converters than the Mbox, wouldn't keeping it digital (s/pdif) be preferable?
Click to expand...

Not really.
Digital to digital is still prone to jitter and clocking issues.
You will probably get a better result going analog out of the Axe FX into most converters.
 
octatonic said:
The numbers are largely irrelevant.

For most people the problem is going to be their own limited experience regarding mixing techniques, not really the gear.
Click to expand...

Agreed! I'm certainly aware of my own lack of experience. I figured I would try to get the gear/setup as good as possible though.
 
The Duet IMHO beats the Mbox2 hands down - no question about it.
The Duet is a very good interface and the preamps (should you choose to use them) are actually quite good, very clean sounding preamps.
Unless you are very proficient at recording and expect the recordings to rank among the absolute state of the art recordings, the Duet will do just fine.
I use a Duet myself, and I know of several "keeper tracks" that was originally only made as demo tracks on a Duet.
Personally recording my Ultra, I clearly prefer going analog out of the Ultra into a quality interface.
Wether you need or want to record in 96 khz I´ll leave up to you and the engineer you are working with. There is a difference, but to many it's a small one.
Is the Duet the best recording interface you might ask, in it´s class IMHO yes, but I´ll admit that I haven´t heard the new RME baby yet, overall of cause not.
I do think however that it is entirely possible to use the Duet as a real pro recording interface as long as you only need 2 inputs at once, and have a minimum of recording skills.
If you don´t have any recording skills whatsoever, and don´t have good ears even the best interface won't help you.
 
ninja9 said:
Thanks Yek. But would the Axe-FX's analog outs recorded at 96kHz sound more professional than if they were recorded at 48kHz, or is the difference negligible? Do you record with your apogee at 48kHz or 96kHz?

Anyone compare an MBox to an Apogee Duet?
Click to expand...

Not many folks record at 96-well not the 100's I have met in my life as a musican. (35 years or so)
 
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