Searching for my Neve 1073 clone

Pretty much every vocal chain I hear these days has a Neve 1073 pre behind the mic. I’ve heard a lot about Neve series and now I’m ready to purchase my Neve clone pre to see what all the hype is about. This choice won’t be easy. My budget will be around $1,500. I really want a channel strip so I can use it for tracking and mixing. Here are the pre’s I’m considering right now. I’ll let y'all know what I decide to purchase and why.....

1. Vintech x73i - The Vintech has been said to be identical in sound to the original 1073. I’ve seen a youtube clip from soundpure.com doing a shootout between the two. If you contact them they say they will send you the original files from the shootout. The x73i right now is my front runner for its price, reputation, and customer support. Dallas from Vintech has been very helpful with any questions I’ve had about the unit. I could not see the EQ frequencies from any pics, even on their site. I emailed Dallas, he replied with his cell number, and I gave him a call to get my eq frequency question answered as well as a few others. Doug at Soundpure had nothing but good things to say about the Vintech as well.
2. Miktek mpa-201 - While not a channel strip the MIktek looks very promising. 2 channels based on the Neve circuit with three impedance settings, a HPF, and a smooth switch for added flexibility. I’m strongly considering this pre because I’ve met the guys at Miktek a few times and believe they really know what they are doing. They got a great rep for their mics and I expect the same from the pre. Mike at Miktek told me they would probably do a channel strip in the future so I kind of want to hold out for that since it will better fit my needs, but jumping on the Miktek bandwagon early would be nice.
3. Slate Pro Audio Fox- Again, not a channel strip, but a very interesting pre I saw come out NAMM. The Fox is a pre that offers four different flavors. One of them being a vintage Neve flavor. I haven’t heard much about this pre since it was announced but I’m still very interested in how different the four flavors on the pre sounds.
4. BAE audio is said to make the closest thing to an original Neve 1073. The only problem is for me to get a BAE audio pre and eq in a channel strip the price would be $3500! For me to get a BAE pre within my budget I’d have to sacrifice the eq and can get even lower by sacrificing the filters. I know someone that has some BAE pre’s and swears Vintech are no competition compared to the BAE’s. So is it worth dropping the EQ to get a BAE pre for $1500? I may have to borrow his and find out.
5. Chameleon Labs 7602mkII w/ zen pro mod - this one is low on my list but I love Chameleon labs and have heard good things about this channel strip. I have a 7720 stereo compressor from them and I absolutely love it. I’ve heard the mod that zenproaudio.com does for them really helps the sound of the sound of pre.

Lynx Aurora review

Got my new Lynx Aurora 8 added to my setup and here is my review. First of all I’ve heard great things about Lynx customer service, unfortunately I haven’t experienced that. I emailed them three times over the last few months with product questions and received no reply at all. Instead my Sweetwater rep was able to answer all my questions. First thing I did was install the lt-adat card I purchased with it. This required removing the top of the unit. Between watching the NBA Allstar weekend and installing the card the process took me about 20 minutes. I could probably do it 10 minutes now that I’m familiar with the process.

I connected it to my M-audio profire 2626 by adat and fired it up for a listen. I played one of my recent mixes and well as some music in my Itunes. I was impressed by what I heard, but switching over to my Dangerous D-box d/a conversion I was blown away at the difference. The D-box was most noticeably louder. Since it was louder it felt like it was a little brighter and little more low end, which now leads to believe that Dangerous D/A is not as transparent as I thought, but I still love the sound of it.

I clocked my Profire to the lynx by adat and opened up some pro tools sessions. I was greeted with a “playback device does not support 48k”. I changed to 44.1k and got the error message for that sample rate as well. I then booted up Logic and tried to play some sessions from it. Logic gave an error message saying “sample rate 40500 recognized”. 40500??? Thats not even close to 44.1k! After calling up one of teachers It was clear that something was going on with the Lynx when it was being clocked by adat. When I switch the Profire to clock internally everything would be fine. I noticed when clocked by adat changing the sample rate on the lynx would not change the sample on the profire. So something was definitely off. I ended up running to Sam Ash to get a BNC wordclock cable. Since clocking to word clock everything is fine. I posted on Lynx support forum my issue but have yet to receive feedback.

I then proceeded to a/b the lynx and my Profire going through the inputs of the d-box. I was in awe at how close the Profire sounded to the Aurora to my ears. The Lynx sounded slighter better to me, but I could see the Profire winning in a blind test. In case your wondering I’m monitoring on my Focal CMS65.

Now to the a/d conversion. I haven’t had time to directly compare the profire to the lynx as far as a/d conversion, but I can say I have been pleased with the Lynx’s conversion from the few mixes I’ve printed through them so far. Not all the time, but often enough, the profire would give me digital clicks and pops on its a/d conversion which I feel was being caused by the clock in the Profire. For this reason clocking the Profire to the Lynx was a no brainer for me. So far I am yet to experience these clicks on pops with the Lynx.

In the search for converters I really wanted to go Apogee because of their reputation but Apogee ended up just being to expensive. The Lynx Aurora 8 feels like a steal at $1,995. You get 8 channels a/d, d/a, and a very nice clock. You would spend twice as much or more to get the same with Apogee. The Profire control panel software made routing to the Lynx very frustrating, to the point I was thinking of getting a new interface, but I’ll go more into that later. Focusing on the Lynx I highly recommend this product for the quality and cost. Now owning the Lynx has also made me appreciate the Profire d/a more now. Black Lion Audio posted on their Facebook page in some comments that they thought the Profire sounded better the Apogee ensemble. At first reading that I thought that was BS giving the reputation of M-audio and Apogee, but now I’m starting to believe it.

Also I’ve noticed people complain of the lack of metering on the Aurora. Downloading the remote control software give you full metering for inputs and outputs and you can control things such as clock source and sample rate from the software.