Yamaha HA8 (8 ch mic-pre) Any experiences?

[dlmorley]

It's rubbish. Truly terrible.





I'm bidding on it btw ;-)

[lampmeister]

Hahaha! Nice one.

Seriously though, it seems it was good enough for Audio Ease to record their stock Altiverb impulses through, and they don't sound too shabby, so I'm thinking it's a winner...depending on price.

Any more info would be very much welcomed.

Cheers y'all,

Dave.

[lampmeister]

Shit! You weren't kidding!

[vixapphire]

Originally Posted by dlmorley

It's rubbish. Truly terrible.

yo, no HA8'ers!!!

[Kurt Foster]

Is there any link / similarity between the HA8 and the older MLA7?

I have one of the latter and I have achieved reasonably good results on remotes with an ADAT, although I have been told it's not "all that great".

Bass players seem to like it a lot as well as Rap Hip Hop producers. It's quite a bit darker than a typical inexpensive pres which is why it sounds ok with the ADAT I suppose .... :roll:

Good luck with your endeavors,
Kurt
_________________________________

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From the sweet grass to the packing house--
Birth till Death -- We travel between the eternity's --"

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"Pristine", "transparent", "warm" (and all variants), "virtually" and,
"performance approaching that of ..... (fill in the correct word)".

[lampmeister]

Well, I picked one up. Took it apart for a little look inside when I got it home, did a bit of cleaning and dusting. Looks to be the business for location recording, very well built and everything looks hunky-dory on the inside. It's reasonably heavy and quite a physically deep unit. It has a 9-pin dsub socket to remotely mute each channel and there's a pin wiring diagram for it in the manual too, so looks like I'm going to be making a remote for it. I'll let you know of my experiences when I get to use it on a real job.

Cheers y'all.

[fishboisfo]

I own one -- I love it. Truly versatile-- studio is at my house though. Traveling with it is a b@%$# !! It is extremely heavy -- quite sturdy. I have had no issues with it, and have had it now for about 2 years. It is always ready to go

[vipunen]

Any more experiences on this one???

I found one for sale, what you think it's worth???

[vipunen]

I found out that one studio I've been recording had one in their gearlist.
I called the studio owner and asked what he thinks. He adviced me to buy the unit for the price, 350€. They're still using it in one of their control rooms, and they have lots of nice pres to choose from...

So I bought the unit, and thought I give my opinion if somebody else is thinking of buying this peace of gear...

And my advice is: GO FOR IT!!! ;D
If I had payed double the price, I would still be glad I bought it!

If you get it for reasonable price and it's 100% working, I believe you won't regret if you buy it.
It has 8 channels! So you can calculate how much it makes per channel.

It works great with dynamics, condensers, and has enough clean gain for recording acoustic guitar with ribbon...

[Alex Specht]

I use this one for live sound through DM1000...

It is great!

AD8HR | Interfaces | Products | Yamaha Pro Audio

[matskull]

I found one of these for 800$ CAD, I can lower the price probably.

I have no decent preamp right now, do you think that would be a good deal?

[matskull]

Nobody knows if its an ok price?

[noiselab]

I bought one for 275GPB including shipping about a month ago. Later I've seen one on the German ebay for around 300EUR. It's a pretty good clear preamp, with lots of gain.

[Becke]

Originally Posted by noiselab

It's a pretty good clear preamp, with lots of gain.

+1

Found one (new in box) and I picked it up a couple of days ago, did a shootout on most of my mics on an HD28 acoustic guitar yesterday, found that a combination of Fishman pickup + Bruel & Kjaer 4011 + Bang Olufsen BM5 ribbon mic was nice on an acoustic guitar. Recorded an unplugged version of "Summertime Blues" just for fun.

It sure sounds different from anything else I have ever done.
(Got a Great River MP2NV, a Behringer T1953 (my first... outch... I sence the stigma), and some more, like Summit Audio, Prosonus, use a bit of old Tandberg recorders as well).

Surprisingly, for the first time ever I didn´t need any effects, eq or compression to get a good sound when I was mixing. Levels and panning and the whole spectra was there. Had a DI100 box to get bass throught the HA8 and also added some extra guitar with Fishman pickups through the DI (also through HA8) and SM58 for the vocals.
It does have a bit of a jazzy sound, which I both liked and didn´t like.
Didn´t like the Fishman pickups sound so much standalone (great & clear but jazzy), but it was better in the mix. In general, strumming chords was fine, but solo sounded jazzy (I don´t like "jazzy" sounds)

The guy who sold it has been working with pro symphonic works and location recording for a very long time. Seemed like a true pro.
He had 2 more of these HA8 and had been using them A LOT for some 10 years. We chatted for a while (after I bought it!) and he complemented the Yamaha unit for the build quality, he says they just don´t break down.

It seems great for acoustic stuff, it does sound high quality and I do can use some more channels.
I was impressed with the sound and the gain, but I guess I miss a bit of "bite". But you can still bring attitude into it, but it doesn´t add attitude on it´s own if you know what I mean.

Paid the same price for this (new in box) HA8 as I did for a one channel preowned Summit Audio tube 2BA-221 preamp some weeks ago which has yet been a bit of a disapointment (hum and noise).
I guess I got the HA8 at a good price... (3500SEK ~450-500USD)

Still probably the most bang for the buck for a preamp I have yet tested. Just add color somewhere else. :-)

Cheers
Mats

[pineapple]

Hi!

I have 3 YAMAHA HA8 pre-amps for sale!
They are second-hand units but they are in perfect conditions!

480 Euros X unit - Or 1200 Euros for all 3

This is located in Spain but I can send it worldwide.

I'm selling also 2 units of YAMAHA MY16AT.
16 ch. ADAT cards for Yamaha consoles (dm1000, dm2000, 01, etc)

350 Euros x unit - or 600 for both.

Waiting for your news.