Quote:
Originally Posted by rick-slo
Preamp and mike shootouts have been done before of course. Used to be a website called listeningsessions which had a dozen or more high end mikes and preamps in combinations for comparisons and high rez audio files. It was interesting how very much the different gear sounded.
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Of course, there are tons of these. My first detailed experience with a professionally done shootout was the AB Pre-CD done years ago, which was fascinating. 40 or so preamps, if I recall, and a major effort. So, anything we post here on AGF is more of an amateur effort just for fun. I can't claim to compete with listeningsessions, SoundPure, etc. One thing I find, tho, is that the pro shootouts rarely use the kinds of material I'm interested in. I don't care about vocals, and I want to hear a good-sounding guitar played fingerstyle. Vocals, drums, electric guitars, strumming, don't tell me anything I want to know. Mostly, of course, I want to hear how the gear works for me, so when I do these, it's mostly to educate myself about what I want to use, and I'm happy to share because it's interesting to get other people's takes on the results, even tho it's possible the results are worthless to anyone else.
I'm mostly being tempted to revisit all the various preamp combos I have because of how many people on this thread are saying that preamps make a big difference. My experience is that the differences are so small as to not matter, but one person's mountain is another's molehill, so it may just be a question of what's being focused on. Or maybe I've gotten used to the ones I use and just don't notice the difference because I'm not comparing side-by-side. So worth revisiting.