http://ultraanaloguerecordings.com/home
The mic preamp those guys use is interesting. Is it 300b ?
Hi Oz.
Silver wound transformers -> WE 437A (western electric) -> 300B.
It's quite a good way to go for a mic pre as the 437A is a very low noise tube. I know a Sydney based recording
engineer that uses a similar pre (2A3 OP tube) and loves it for simple rich sounding applications (vocals etc).
It's an area of audio that I love and used to design / build gear for a very talented minimalist recording engineer.
The most important thing (besides the musicians) is the room / mics and technique. Then pre, recording medium etc
It's very pecialized and requires deep knowledge of mic types, positioning etc. Every mic 'hears' differently and that's
not just freq response but depth of field and off axis response. Throw in the venue acoustics / ambient qualities (reverberation)
and it's a tricky mix.
One particularly interesting job was at Sydney Recital Hall (refer pic). He was using a stereo coincident ribbon (from memory)
that had to be hung from the ceiling. There was a very long mic cable (existing venue setup) that the mics struggled to drive.
I built a small battery powered head amp that hung just above mic and this drove the cable to a custom mic pre.
Some of those recordings sounded really nice.
With mic pre's it's just like DAC's - you choose the pre to compliment the music / mics etc
Z