A-Designs P1 "500 Series" preamp...trial

[natpub]

Continuing the demos of converters and preamps we did this month, I noted in another thread that we tested the A-Designs P1. The good folk at Front End Audio, and Peter Montessi at A-Designs were kind enough to lend us a unit to experiment upon (he-he).

The package arrived in good packaging, clearly safe and sound. Upon opening, we were taken by the metal front plate that completely covers all the circutry. I wish I had taken a pic, but I was drooling too much to think clearly.

This thing was built like a tank. I know, everyone says that, but I mean a real tank! I had the feeling I could have shot an M16 round at it only to watch the bullet bounce off. It is heavy too. The P1 feels like every cent of its price. But on to the sound.

We carefully slid the unit into our Brent Averill 6 slot rack mount box (a very nice box, ideal price/quality/slots balance). Upon the relieving and firm fit into the slot, we did our little anti-rackrash trick [take a couple small pieces of that blue painters tape and shove the mounting screws into it, then screw it all into the preamp & rack. While it is critical to make sure you screw top and bottom screws into a 500 Series preamp so you dont have constant and possibly damaging movement when you use it, it is also important not to scratch up a unit you have on loan!].

Anyway, we set up a 57 real quick just to get some sounds. We used some cans to just listen and move the mic around the space, getting a feel of the P1. We messed with the gain nob a bit.

Right away, I started shouting--"I sound like Seal!!! I sound like Seal!!" Needless to say, a bit later we calmed down, and realized I did NOT sound like Seal. Sigh, alas, so much for my fantasy about a single piece of gear making me a vocal god.

Still, the P1 did have a bit of that Seal vibe goin on. The lower third of audible bandwidth was clearly made known, full, and huge. Not insanely huge, just perfectly big. The mids were fluid, the high end round and clean.

At first we thought there was some weird noise floor going on, but several minutes spent fcking with cables and gain structure resutling in the expected silence. That said, there was definately some noise floor once you shoved the P1 up into max gain. Livable noise though, and well worth the resulting fattness. This box is a saturation dream. The P1 has many, many sounds available, if you take time to mess with the pad, gain, and your overall gain structure.

We proceeded to test the 57 on vox and AcGtr, an Octava 012 on AcGtr and BGV, and our Alesis/GrooveTubes AM51 LDC on Vox, AcGtr, mandolin, and BGV. We ran every track solo, then against originals we had done with our Midas 320 pre's. We spent a few hours doing several other combos with each mic, and various instruments and percussion. We of course did the carkeys thingy, and stomped on the floors, banged on crap outside, etc. [btw, note, this preamp has an unusual ability to pick up the sound of your refridgerators and AC, no matter how many rooms away--neat, yet weird--we turned off the fridge, forgot we had, and ended up with melted ice cream 5 hours later, yikes!].

Now, the Midas pre's arent bad, but like other tests we have posted, we laughed out loud when compared to a high-class unit like this P1. The difference was shocking and somewhat embarrasing (we made quite a few songs on the Midas). We put up some meters on very close reso just to look at noise floor, and the Midas pre's (though it has a bit longer path to travel) had almost exactly double the noise of the P1. This becomes pretty telling at high gain input, especially when we started stacking BGV tracks.

We had some other very tops 500 Series preamps on trial, which I'll post on different threads. I really agree with those saying that the "shootout" format is kind of silly when comparing top end gear like this. It all comes down to what you want and need for a specific application.

Anyhoo, to get down to the nitty, our results were that we were amazed at the way the P1 made male Vox sound like god. For any kind of harder rock, pop, etc, this thing is gold (errr, Platinum?). The weird thing about the P1 is it nearly forces you to ROCK. I tried to sing some ballad vox into it, which sounded deliciously rich, but I kept leaning into the vox in a somewhat overboard way. We do country/pop/folk/americana/renessaince kinda music--meaning very acoustic. Thus, the P1 tended to mold the tracks into a place we did not exactly mean to go.

However, the mandolin tracks were sheerly fluid. I thought we had a ribbon mic up instead of the condensers and dynamic we had. If we had indeed used a ribbon, then serious EQ would have been needed to counter the richness--unless, hmm, jeesh, it was like a solo fiddle, mando, harmonica, etc track.

Moving on, we went for our big test, the female vox. We have a Karen Carpenter meets Ann Wilson alto singer, and main vox was our main need at this time. On the LDC, we tossed off a few tracks we knew, and bounced them up agasint the old Midas tracks. HOLY SIHT! This was fattness incarnate. The vox literally skated above 40 other tracks of dense material, as if they were vapour.

We kept soloing the vox on and off, and shifting back and forth between 3 other preamps, and glancing at each other in rapid eye movements as if the police would come any moment and arrest us for illicit sex (yeah, I know, we live in Texas...illegal dildoes, yadd-yadda, bla-bla).

All-in-all, for femVox, the P1 was a tastey bit of thickness, yet avoided the pitfalls one can run into with super-fat pre's like the early Neves. Certainly those pitfalls are an engineering error, not the preamp, but the P1 definately owns the balance between forgiving and forgetting.

After several trials with stacking BGV, both fem and male, we started to have some buildup, and had to crank in some EQ. While that may be no problem if you are well equiped with outboard, we are stuck partially ITB, despite the Midas EQ (which is servicable, yet not what I would call audiophile nor euphonic). I despise most plug-ins (toys really), but alas, that is what we have to work with.


Near the end, we began ElecGtrs. Now the P1 really started to shine. This beast made EGtr ideally present yet glued to the song. Exactly what you woudl want for power chords or strummy stuff. This would not be my first choice for solo picking, but again, we do country-ish music, not the metal I used to know. We did actually put up some things I had done in the metal days on both Neve and SSL, and the results were as advertized, a very nice balance between.

Almost as an afterthought, I plugged our 90' Fender PBass into the DI. I was basically just screwing off that afternoon. Was I in for a jolt!

This DI is worth the price of the entire unit. For bass alone. We have tried lots of DI's, tube, ss, etc, during the past several months. We had plenty of comparrison tracks. We even had some Nashville loops from DoD (Bass on Demand) which are pretty cool when you are writing film or commercial stuff. We use DoD and DFHS quite a bit when doing such scoring. Same with GIGA. Naturally, I had to try running our VSL strings into the DI next. Same result, huge.

At the end of the day, we sadly packed up the P1, and readied it for return. If we had the budget today, we would have kept it without question. Since we have quite a lot of screetchy, tin-y, and sharp instrumentation, the P1 would be, to us, ideal to round off those edges, and sooth our savage beasts.

Indeed, the P1 push to rock would be ideal for our instrumentation. I'd not choose it first for BGV. The unit is ideal for male lead vox, and would be similar for any airy soprano femVox.

Truly, we plan to buy the P1 as soon as our finances permit, for exactly these reasons. Bear in mind that for us, our ideal of a femVox preamps is the GML (somewhat out of budget at this time, he-he--ya gotta consider how cost effective the 500 series is, and how many new units are coming out lately). Thus, finally, we elected to go with a different unit for this particular project, mainly to upgrade the alto femVox. For many other applications, we would go with the P1 in a heartbeat.

The P1, and each of the other 500 Series units we tried were all fantastic, and it really comes down to what sound you want on what application, once you enter a certain threshold of quality.

I took some pics of the action, but our daughter ran off the best ones on her camera to her Maya Animation class in NYC this week. I asked her tonite if she could email them to me, but she forgot the freekin cable! I will try to add the pics to this post when she returns at month's end. For now these from my phone will have to do.

Hope this helps someone.

Best, KT

P.S. BTW, yes, that is a towel under the BA rack, and a redhot pepper hot pad under the converters---yup, the Lynx gets hot! and--yep, we did pull out the other 500 Series preamps we tested for this pic to avoid the whole shootout thingy.

[Peter Montessi]

Hi Natpub,

Looks like you took some serious time out here.

Thanks for the GREAT effort and detailed report.

Peter Montessi
A Designs Audio
www.adesignsaudio.com

[weatherbox]

I too really love the P1. Electric guitars are great through it, very present, and it LOVES my Royer 121 on a bright amp. OHs are present, punchy, but smooth. We're tracking male lead vox tonight with one, I can't wait. This is definitely a preamp to grab two (I may even grab two more!) of, it sounds great on lots of sources. Can't wait for that EQ! I can feel myself preparing to be an A-Designs junkie...

[max cooper]

Is that a lunchbox with rack ears?

[Brad McGowan]

The P-1 is my personal favorite of all the 500 modules that A Designs makes. I own two of them! I love it especially on vocals and guitars like you mentioned. It makes me sound like I actually can sing. SM7B through P-1 on my voice is magic!

You'll regret that you didn't buy that preamp.

Brad

[AdamJay]

Originally Posted by Brad McGowan

The P-1 is my personal favorite of all the 500 modules that A Designs makes.

me too!

I own two of them!

me too!

I love it especially on vocals and guitars like you mentioned.

whoah dude, me too, again!

It makes me sound like I actually can sing.

okay well no preamp can do that for me.
I will say, however, that it makes me sound GREAT trying.

[natpub]

Originally Posted by max cooper

Is that a lunchbox with rack ears?

Yup

http://www.brentaverill.com/products....asp?itemnum=5

completely solid, not just some tacked on rack ears.