Reddit mentions: The best microphone preamps

yes I am not really helping your core question and that is a weakness for me, but it looks like you are on a learning curve. everyone in audio is on a constant learning curve, there is so much to keep up with. re: "scrambled brain" it is a pretty common thing for many mix persons to be keeping track of about two hundred things at once, no exaggeration. For example? 64 inputs, 22 mixes in-ear and wedge monitor in real time band on stage (aka "mixing monitors) and in recording add-processing, so the stately speaking is maybe not a forté, a strength. Look, make no mistake, some companies leverage their goods to make money and other companies do it for the love. There is a pretty big difference in the two. Sounds like your eyes are opened for the horizon. How lucky you are. Ha we are on opposite spectrum as I am totally non-headphone unless it is an overdub for the artist, but I sure do not use them. Allow me to up the ante for your ten-year plan. Yes, I think an interface would put you and your buddy ahead, give you a lot of power over what you are doing. If you want to make it better from there, despite what some persons think, the actual mic pre is a huge huge thing. You can get an outboard mic pre and plug this into an interface balanced line in. In other words, interface- yes, but from there, there is another step to really improve your sound and the ease of your work. For example, a lot of professional voice people do this but add a single channel pre, for example, an ISA and it just fattens everything up, noticeable difference in a good way. Now here's the deal. A single channel ISA is $500. brand new, but you can do something similar for half the money, with a Golden Age mic pre for half the money @ $250. brand-new. So, I am trying to tell you two things, really good audio can be done on the cheap, and imo the mic-pre is the everything.

Re: "the money" a while back I put together a club PA for a friend of mine, big-ass 4way stomping PA real stuff, cost tens of thousands of dollars, doing tour bands, sounding good, and I put it together for 10-15 cents on the dollar. I have experience with this, and it worked out real well, but with SooOOoooOOoo much audio equipment out there, maybe look beyond what is in the new catalog. The catalogs and marketing are hypnotic and they permeate the bandwidth but it is hardly what anything is about.

edit: And really, things are so cheap to purchase today. Not very long ago, consoles for $10-50k. An early yamaha synthesizer was almost $80,000. For real. Analog 1/3 octave EQ's cost $1000. each not long ago. My first digital reverb was $1,000., so you really are in an excellent time period for what you can get for your $.

The 286s can drive the RE-20, but I had to push the gain up a lot higher than I'd like, not giving me the sort of wiggle room I'd prefer to have. Since the CL-1 does come out super clean, I've been really happy with the results.

I've been toying with the idea of switching to a Focusrite ISA One (super clean, very neutral, drives the RE-20 just fine), but that would set off an upgrade chain I'm just not ready to think about yet. Besides, I do like the color the 286s adds at the moment, so I'm in no rush.