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So I'm looking at buying some new I/O and the unit I want has 4 pre's and 4 line inputs so I'm going to need some pre's. I'm not looking to buy anything too expensive because I may not know the difference but I'm just wondering what I should be looking at. what do you guys think about the ART stuff? Am I wasting my money buying that or is it not half bad.

How many pres do you want? What is the interface you are looking at buying?

Apogee ensemble is what I'm after. Interested in 4 channels.

The ensemble would be a great unit for you! It has good conversion and good preamps. It's very similar to the RME Fireface 800, the conversion is on par but I suspect the preamps will be better on the ensemble, although the fireface is more expandable. Since you are a Logic/Apple guy, I guess it would make sense to go with the Ensemble.

I guess the rest really depends on what you want to do. 4 channels of good utility preamps plus one really solid go-to preamp would be plenty for a guy in your situation I'd figure. In that scenario I'd tell you to buy the same thing I'd tell anyone to buy: Daking Mic Pre One. tons of clean gain, great metering. Great all around preamp. It's the same preamp section from our Pre/RQ and from the Daking IV that Andrew loves so much. It's really a solid piece of kit. I'm suggesting this based on what I know of you and on the fact that you don't want to spend a ton of money. It's about $800.

If you absolutely want to have a total of 8 mic pres (maybe you do...) Then get the Sytek MPX4 for not much more (about $1000 landed I suspect). It's a really decent preamp and a really amazing deal when you consider it's around $250 per channel to your door. Honestly I wished we got two of them. Matter of fact...we still might!

What are you intending on recording though? These days I usually recommend that people with home studios keep their rig tight and efficient. A "less is more" kind of approach. Instead of a bunch of half-ass preamps I'd suggest getting one solid channel set up and having a few solid utility pres and calling it a day. No matter where you go in any studio, typically once the bed tracks are in the can, it's all down to one or two channels for all of the overdubs.

That being said my third suggestion would be a good stereo preamp. At which point I say the Great River is a good solid buy. It's gonna cost you at least as much as your Interface, but you'll probably never out grow it.

P.S. Is Andrew back from vacation yet? I can't keep doing his job forever...

Thanks for the reply Matt. This seems like a good way to go. I wouldn't be opposed to putting all my eggs in one basket but now that I have some cash( not to mention 4 days off every 4 days)I want to be able to start recording drums a little bit. I think I've found a small room to work out of underneath a music store that was meant to be a small 3 room studio but it didn't fly because the owner start a club or something.

WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET????????????

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I would be willing to spend around what Matt's suggestion costs, but if it's a small amount for a big jump in quality I would probably do that.

Sorry to bring up old posts but why would someone decide to make an $800 pre amp and not make it rack mountable. Would there be a way to Rack mount it?

Contemporary wisdom suggests that placing the preamplifier next to the source reduces both losses and interference.

See here for example.

Also here is a picture I took of the brilliant gentleman at the 117th AES in San francisco in 2004.



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I think he's referring to the mic pre one Al, which isn't going to solve the (basically non-existent) problem of signal loss over medium length mic lines.

A simple way to rack it up would be to combine the 500 series version with a single unit 500 series rack. It'll cost basically exactly the same and be fully rackmountable. Other options would include buying a full 500 rack and filling it up eventually, spending a bit more on something like the Great River ME-1NV, or something like the Sytek. The Great River isn't really a step up sonically, but it does have a little more functionality. The Sytek is maybe a slight step down but the bang for the buck factor goes up hugely.

Links are identical.

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Thanks, should be fixed now.

So I'm getting closer to getting my I/O. I was going to get monitors first but there's something severely wrong with my Safire pro 40.

A few days ago apogee discontinued the ensemble. They're suggesting the symphony or the quartet instead of the emsemble. I thought about it and there's no way I'm dropping 4 grand on the symphony, but I'm very curious how it works. There's malts on the back. So would you buy a cable that fits into that and then goes out to a bunch of XLR's?

NAMM is in a couple days so they might have a new product to replace the ensemble. I've read that they're trying to focus on the symphony but its a big gap to go from the quartet to the symphony

dylanger wrote:So I'm getting closer to getting my I/O. I was going to get monitors first but there's something severely wrong with my Safire pro 40.

A few days ago apogee discontinued the ensemble. They're suggesting the symphony or the quartet instead of the emsemble. I thought about it and there's no way I'm dropping 4 grand on the symphony, but I'm very curious how it works. There's malts on the back. So would you buy a cable that fits into that and then goes out to a bunch of XLR's?

I would rather build then buy those break out cables but yeah...


All you'd need is some mic preamps to go with it.

dylanger wrote:NAMM is in a couple days so they might have a new product to replace the ensemble. I've read that they're trying to focus on the symphony but its a big gap to go from the quartet to the symphony

Interesting move by Apogee. The Ensemble is a great unit, why not just buy it anyways? It's not as if they will fall off the face of the planet tomorrow.

I still might do that. They didn't release anything today to replace it. All they released at NAMM was a bunch of stuff for IPads. I was pretty surprised.

I've been doing lots of research on the Symphony and its not as unattainable as it was when it first came out. The 2x6 version is the same price as the Ensemble and it has 8 channles of ADAT. That would at least get me going and fix my monitoring situation, then I could add another module as slowly get more preamps. I don't think I'll be doing any serious recording until I get home for good so the 2x6 would probably do just fine, and I'm told the converters on the symphony are that much better than whats on the ensemble. I really want to get something that I can grow with and I might not be able to here the difference right now but as time goes on and I practice I won't want to get trade up to new gear, and yes I like buying gear......

Sounds like a plan.

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