Getting a good preamp is something
that is not easy to do. Along the way there are many stumbling blocks,
things that get in your way before you finally get down to business and pay.
There must be a hundred reasons to not spend a lot of money on a preamp, a
piece of gear that only does one thing, boost your microphone or instrument
signal to line level. Last year I counted up the number of mic preamps
I had in my studio. I was aghast to realize I had over 50 mic preamps,
46 of them on mixers, and that I used one or two of them on a regular basis.
How was I to justify getting a box that had "just one more"?
Especially one that had none of the features we are accustomed to getting.
The ME-1NV falls into the "wire+gain"
philosophy of preamp. That is to say, there are no frills, no extra
circuitry to run the sound through. No EQ, compression, gate, scooper,
de-esser, harmonic shifter, nothing. There's no digital signal path,
no s/pdif, ADAT, no big VU meters, just the basics.
It comes in a 1/2 rack 1 unit high case of
thick metal. A bit heavier than you'd expect and all the switches are
solid. The gain control is a stepped control, and you have a choice of
settings in 5db increments from 5db to 60db. The Output level knob is
smooth and variable from -10 to +10db. Fully pushed to the max there
is 70db of gain which is plenty for any dynamic or condenser mic and
probably for most ribbons as well. In addition to the usual phantom
power and polarity switches, there is a switch for "loading" and for
"impedance". These can give your mics a slightly different sound and
response characteristic. Where you set the output can also affect the
sound. You can push the gain up high and decrease the output level
into minus territory for a more vintage sound, or lower the initial gain and
boost the output for a more modern sound, according to the documentation.
There is also a HiZ input for electric
guitars, basses, or whatever instrument level devices you wish to amplify.
Works great. My guitars come through as clean as I could want, with a
nice texture for mixing.
Subjective characteristics:
First test: Acoustic guitar/Shure SM81. The first thing that I noticed
in the first minute was the awesome sense of pressure coming from my
recorded audio tracks. It was a character that could be felt as well
as heard. Perhaps it is this sense of dynamics that lead people to say
its a great pre for pop music. Its got punch. Second Test:
Vocals (mine) with an SM57 and then an RE20 by Electro voice. The SM57
sounded so good I had to check to make sure I did not make some mistake and
record into the wrong mic! My first thought was heck, throw the rest
of the mics away, this is all I need. Until I tried the RE20, which
was even better with plenty of high end but no harshness. Oddly I
found the RE20 to sound better than the Neumann TLM 103 with the ME-1NV, at
least with my voice, yet the Neumann had all of its characteristic
smoothness, now in greater relief.
Though the ME-1NV is not regarded as one of
the quietest preamps, to me, with my limited experience with high end
preamps it was very quiet with a rich detailed sound. While I can
imagine a more "transparent" sound, and a more "neutral" sound, I'd have a
hard time convincing myself that is what I really want. So far it has
been able to take everything i have thrown at it.
Count me as a satisfied customer.
After all the years of messing around with lesser preamps and spending lots
of cash on things that did not as profoundly affect recorded sound, I have
to wonder why it took me so long.
Go to the studio-central
Mic Preamp
forum
