Any suggestions on the best 8 channel mic pre with digital outs. In one room of my studio I've got some old Roland gear including a VS-1880. It still works great but the pre's and converter are pretty crappy. I've heard the trick is just to bypass them with something outboard. I've heard the PreSonus and the Focusrite are decent for the job, but haven't tried them myself. Both are 8 channel with pretty good converters. You go into the VS via lite-pipe. It should be a good work around. Any ideas as to who makes the best mic pre for the job?
Really depends on your budget and application, products from either of the companies you listed will give you better sonics than what you have now. For a slightly different take you could get into Apogee or RME as well. There you're getting into more of a premium A/D converter so it depends on the source material (among other things of course)whether the extra fidelity is worth the extra dollars. Robert
Thanks Robert... The Apogee stuff looks like it's mainly converters right? I see a couple of small pre's but it otherwise looks like it's all converters? On your website you show the PreSonus DigiMAX LT and the Focusrite OctoPre which both look like they've got 8 channel mic pre's and decent converters... At least better than the ones in the Roland gear... I could go with something like (2) Focusrite ISA 428's with the optional 8 channel converter card, but it might be overkill for the Roland 1880... I could always save it and use it in my bigger room... Is the 428 worth the additional $$$ over the Octo???
Keep in mind that you're talking about two distinct functions. Eight channels of pres PLUS eight channels of converters in one inexpensive unit are not going to be stellar quality. If you don't really need eight channels at once you might be better off sinking the same money into two channels of better quality. Apogee has something called a Mini Me which has 2 channels of preamps, compressors and converters. I've never used it but I've seen them around a couple of Nashville studios. Might be just the thing...? Out of five pieces of PreSonus gear purchased by members of my family, two were defective out of the box and had to be exchanged while three became either partially or completely useless less than a year out of warranty. I'll never buy another PreSonus piece.
The Focusrite Octopre is good from what I've heard. Behringer also make a cheap and cheerful one if you are on a tight budget.
Truth is, that's closer to what I actually heard. I just wanted to find a half-year-old thread and revive it with a "me too." Seems to be the trend here, so I thought I'd go with the flow.
The Mackie Onyx 800r has been getting some decent reviews. I don't have one but have been using a CZ1604 VLZ Pro with the XDR pre's for a long time and they sounds fine. I a/b'd with my Avalon ST737sp and there wasn't much difference. The Onyx 8004 pres are supposed to be better than the 1604s. It has 8 channels of pre's and 192khz digital out but I don't know anything about the quality of the converters. For the price (around 1 grand) it is probably worth a listen anyway. DAB
Believe it or not....... After all this time, I ended up using my Great River MP-2NV along with a pair of 1176's and an Apogee Rosetta 200. I had these three pieces of gear for use with a ProTools setup I have in another room, but just for grins I tried it all out with the old Roland box bypassing all the Roland pre's and converters and going in via SPDIF... Do you know what? When you end up using all the good stuff (and just limit the Roland's use to the hard drive basically), it actually sounds pretty good
Cause I still had that old Roland box in another room... Mainly for the kids... But the pre's were/are awful. The box itself is a great songwriting tool, and if you put this front end on it and just use it as a hard drive/digital mixer, it sounds as good as anything I've heard with Pro Tools.........
Geez, I could have told you that last year. That's exactly how you use the 1880. The digital mixer on the 1880 is pretty good for home studio usage. As you now know, you are limited to 2 digital channels input thru the back of the box. So I wasn't sure why you were needing an 8 channel pre with converters, unless you were mixing the 8 channels down to 2 at the mic pre then going in 2 channels digital to the 1880.
Nobody´s mentioned the Behringer ADA8000. Really a nice piece of gear for a great price. Don´t let the name fool you, sometimes they like to sneek something good by us.
