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.

post winter NAMM 2011

Post Winter NAMM 2011


WInter NAMM is over so now its time to recap in my opinion was the best products announced. I wasn’t able to attend but sites like gearwire.com, mixonline.com, and soundonsound.com kept me up to date with what was happening. Sad to say I still haven’t seen or heard the Slatepro Audio fox pre which Slate would be on display at NAMM, and there is still no extra info on the site. Maybe nobody has posted video of it yet. I did see a tweet from Slatepro Audio about a program called gobbler. Gobbler lets you organize, back up (50gb’s a month), and share sessions. Its almost like dropbox made specifically for pro audio. I downloaded it and first impressions are very positive. It scans all your connected drives for sessions and you can easily search and pull them up.
Presonus was selling there Studio One Artist DAW for 90% off making it only $20.11. For that price I went ahead and jumped on it. First impressions have been good. The key commands are weird to me but you can customize them so thats no problem. Its not enough to take me off of Logic, which I’ve been using since Logic 5, but its easy to use and within an hour I had a pretty good handle on it. For $20.11 I got a DAW, some virtual instruments, and a sampler. Not bad.

Here is what I found interesting at Winter NAMM this year:
Focusrite Rednet looked amazing to me. High quality a/d and d/a converters and mic pres in customizable units. Whats special about rednet is that it uses ethernet to pass audio connection. The ethernet connection can pass 128 simultaneous I/O allowing 256 total channels. The units look sleek and I’m impressed by the product design. Focusrite never disappoints in product design to me. I contacted Focusrite on their facebook page for pricing info but nobody has responded yet. Seeing the Focusrite red pre is $4,000 I’m guessing these will be what I call stupid expensive. But we won’t know for until Focusrite releases price info. Hopefully they will be competitively priced. Lynx offers the Aurora 8 for $1995, 8 channel high quality a/d and d/a converter, comparable to the Rednet 1. So I expect it to at least start there in price.

Universal Audio Satellite made a huge announcement with this one. The popular UA plugins are now available via firewire dsp hardware, similar to the SSL duende. So now you can use the UA plugins without needing a pci card and a mac pro. It was only a matter of time I felt before UA made this move.

Izotope Stutter edit is a very cool software that easily lets you stutter tracks. I was working on a mix few months ago for a client that wanted stuttering in the song and this would have been perfect. I ended up rewiring Reason into Pro Tools, sampling the vocals into the NNXT, and chopping them up there playing em back on pads of my MPK to get them to stutter. I downloaded the demo and have been playing with it the last few days. Throw it on a track and create a midi track and set the i/o and your ready to stutter. It seems to have a lot of weird left field presets that I would probably never use, but would be good to have. The intro promo price at $149 is pretty good. For as much as I’d probably use it I would prefer to pay $99 for it. The reg price of $249 is too much to me.



Other cool things was Korg Kronos, Presonus Studio Live Ipad app, and SSL’s stereo dynamics module for their X-rack series.

Stepping up my blogging game in 2011

So one my New Years resolutions was blogging more. So since my last post was back in August here we go.

Starting off 2011 I’m ready to see what new shows up at NAMM. For anyone who wasn’t ready to show off what they had at AES now is the time. I’m probably most looking forward to hearing (and seeing) what the new Slatepro Audio Fox will can do. Something tells me the final version will be as sexy looking as their Dragon compressor, which is also on my wish list.

Right now I’m in the market for a good mic pre or channel strip. I’m leaning heavily towards the empirical labs mike-e right now, but considering the Vintech x73i, the Fox, and the Miktek mpa-201. My favorite channel strip I’ve ever used is the Avalon 737. The pre on there is sweetest I’ve heard on vocals. If I get a 737 I have to have the black anniversary edition one, and I’m not ready to spend $2250 on a channel strip right now.
Back to NAMM. I’m hoping to see some new stuff from Lynx and Apogee. I’ve decided I’m going with a Lynx aurora 8 for converters for my studio, but I wish Lynx would make an actual interface with flexible connectivity and a couple mic pres. As far as Apogee I really wanted to get an Ensemble, but with it only having 1 adat I/O it just wasn’t enough for me. The new symphony i/o really had my attention but cost nearly $6,000 to put two modules in it. So I wish Apogee would release something in between the ensemble and the new symphony i/o. Really an ensemble with an extra i/o of ADAT is fine with me.
Will we see this NAMM? Probably not, but hey, I can dream right?

throneholder podcast ep1

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summer namm 2010

Summer Namm was held here in Nashville and for the first time it was open to the public so I had to go. I had a great time. Got to see some cool products and attend some interesting seminars. MXL new channel strip was very nice. It was a transparent mic pre and compressor in a 1U rack space. The rep said it would cost around $500 when it was released. MXL also had some new mics they were showing off.

Rackwriter definitely caught my eye with their product. It was a rackmountable dry eraser board for your rack. This was brilliant! No more using masking tape on your rack. I have to get me a couple of these. The Yamaha Terion was pretty cool, but I couldn't see myself using for serious production, and it was a pricey. Beamz interactive music system made my jaw drop. Hand activated triggering of music samples. I was even more blown away when the rep said I could load in my own samples. Think this product would cost a $1,000 I was shocked when he said it was only $200. I vision kids having fun this but then I could see DJ's using this to trigger songs.

I'm not a guitar player but guitars is mostly what Summer NAMM is all about. The show is I would say 70% guitars. Below are some pics and videos of my visit to Summer NAMM 2010.

Nashville Musicians Hall of Fame

I went to the Musicians Hall of Fame this past Friday since they will be closing their doors for good this weekend due to new construction going on downtown Nashville. The Hall of Fame was nice but what really caught my attention was the recording console used by Owen Bradley. Quoted by the older lady next to me as I observed the console "Nashville would not be what it is today if it wasn't for Owen Bradley." The console was the oldest one I have ever seen. Its like I was looking at an SSL's great ancestor. From the description posted above the console, this was the first recording console in the Quonset Hut studio on Music Row, also known as CBS studio B. Took some pics and shot a short video. Enjoy!