Motu 896 vs Mackie Onyx 800R vs Digidesign 003 mic pre shoot out look no more!

[batterythinker]

So a couple of guys and I got sick of all the 'they said and I said,' stuff that comes from those G.C. guys or whatever guys. We decided to verse three items mic pres; Motu 896, Mackie Onyx 800R, and Digidesign 003 rack. In this experiment we applied a standard dynamic microphone the Sennheiser E835(typically has a thicker bottom and more body than most generic live production dynamic microphones). I wanted a mic that was going to have mids and lows presented in the frequency response if they existed in the signal.
Below I have listed the general procedure and desired application: The E835 had multiple identical vocal phrases recorded in Protools with half the mic pre gain engage on each mic pre. Using the Digidesign 003 to sync via toslink/optical the Mackie Onyx 800R, we then applied the 003 to sync toslink/optical to the Motu 896. The 003 had the most gain and presence, the 800R had very little more gain than the 896, and the 896 had more mid and low response than the 800R as well as the 896 lacked high response and overall gain. I am still hesitant to say if that the highs from the 800R mic pre were allowing the waveform to appear to have more output than the 896, but hey viewing the display you could see the gain results.
I really wanted to bring some clarity on the above mic pres to the people that read this excerpt. I hope this information will assist in many future recording endeavors.

[PDC]

For this test to be worth a darn, your mic pres need to be calibrated. Setting the pots at 50% means nothing when the pres have different amounts of gain. So you really can't make a judgement about anything really, because the gain was not the same, the output was not the same, and that likely contributed to the linearity differences that you are hearing.

By the way, if you do a search you will find some comparisons between the Mackie pre and the Neve Portico, which are interesting.