Live Two Track, Continued

[wshaw]

Hi All--

Well, I recorded a live performance last Friday using my Royer Sf1s, Grace Lunatec V3, and the M Audio Microtrack that I purchased after getting LOTS of great advice from you slutz, via this thread:

http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=94273

Yes indeedy--somewhat to my surprise, 24 bit is MUCH more vibrant and lifelike than 16 bits!! Surprising to me, in that I always figured that the main difference bit depth makes was dynamic range, so a signal at moderately high level or higher should sound pretty much the same at either 16 or 24 bit, right?

Well, wrong. Somehow. There is a BIG difference. The recording was awesome. Beautiful (for a 2-track).

By the way, the Microtrack worked great, except for one stoopid quirk: the spdif socket is flush with the body of the unit, and the opening around it for the RCA collar is too narrow for a high-quality cable to fit! My Canare cable was no good. I hadda use a cheap generic RCA! Weird, right? But it worked, so unless you know a way to shave out the plastic around the spdif port . . .

Anyways--next on the upgrade path is a mic pre, I guess.

The V3 has that clean effortless Grace sound. Really nice, especially through headphones. But I wonder about a pre that has more juice . . . like the comparison thread a few months back that contrasted the same choral recording with a Millennia pre and a DAV pre.

I'm thinking DAV. Or SCA J99 (I already have an Seventh Circle box, so no big deal to add more cards). Would an API be too colored? I want to have a rig that can be used for any kind of live performance, so I don't want to go too far into color-land. For instance, the N72 I have in the SCA box strikes me as too colored. Maybe Pacifica? A vintage Tele/Siemans/TAB?

Opinions?

Thanks, all a' youse!

[wshaw]

IMPOSSIBLE!

And yet, all is silence . . .