But then those were very bad Neve clones and not worth the money

The ULN preamps are certainly very, very good and clean. But once you have worked with serious outboard preamps and the ULN (as a great ! ADDA converter), the difference is immense.

Yes, you can do saturation or coloration to a certain extent with the "character" plugin. But Neve , API , Tubetech and Co are not to be replaced by the (really good) MIO Character PlugIn.

Also clean/neutral preamps like Millennia cannot be replaced with ULN preamps. As good as the Metric Halo ULN-8 preamps are, it cannot replace everything. That would be too much to ask.

Ultimately, however, the ULN-8 can be used without any external equipment to perform completely professional recordings and ITB mastering.

What I appreciate most about ULN 8 and LIO 8 after many years is the ingenious usability of MIO Mixer in combination with the ADDA qualities of the device. I'll never want to miss that again. And now the 3D upgrade (!) , it is incredibly good compared to all other "All In One" audio interfaces on the market. In this segment I know nothing better.

Wow. I’ve wirked with a lot of great Neve, Daking boards and pres, Millennia, etc. I’m happy just working with MH. I think they’re every bit as good or better. I’ve A/B a lot withthe ULN8 and Millennia, since u own a bunch of those pres.

So we're both happy with the Metric Halo devices. But as good as the ULN preamps are, I would never put them above Millennias. They (Millennias) add some extras to the signal, even if it's not "coloring". The same also applies to my Dakings or Heritages or TK Audio etc. Preamps. I just really like it. all do something with the signal that I would never expect from a ULN preamp just for construction reasons.

But I absolutly agree that you don't need anything else than the ULN Preamps and good mics if you need very neutral and beautiful sounding recordings. But I would miss that little extra from my outboard a lot.

And when it comes to recordings like e.g. "Hudson" by DeJohnette, Scofield etc., I absolutely agree with you. Such a sound doesn't require that "extra" , but clear, highly neutral and precise preamps like those in ULN8.

I wouldn’t put them ABOVE my Millennia’s. But i do put them on par.

They were bae and vintech... but I’m not saying they are not good but, they work better only on certain things, and i’m not saying character is at level of hardware, but that uln8 pres are at level and actually better from an absolute point of view, so they take saturation very well, but they don’t sound like neve if you apply character, from what I hear and understand, character only gives you harmonics, hardware is much more other than harmonics

Take it in this way, point is, my way of working was doing the draft recording while working on production with the uln8 and then the good recordings that ended on the final production, were made with neves, focusrite, ua, and other stuff... but in the end, when selecting the final tracks I most of the time ended up choosing the recordings done with the uln8, so I preferred the money and sold the stuff in the last few years

Having no budget problems, I’d love to have a ssl a neve sidecar and tons of hardware, but I didn’t see the point in keeping them (and consider I’m the kind of guy who keeps gear even if they are very good only at doing one thing, if that thing is really important to me, and that usually is... I only regret having sold the 1176, but that’s for other obvious reasons)

Interesting point of view, thanks for clarification, makes sense

I have recently compared an ULN-8 sum with an online render of Reaper. They were bit-identical. And also sounded the same.

The test I did many years ago between Logic and ULN-8 included an offline bounce in Logic. There, the Logic sum was veiled and blurred, compared to the ULN-8 sum, and they didn't null at all. It seems that certain instruments were slightly delayed in the mix when bounced in Logic.

An online (= realtime) bounce sounds considerably better than offline bounce, even in Reaper (which unfortunately is also true for freezing). Reaper has an internal 64 bit bus.

If the realtime bounce sounds different than the offline bounce in the same program, there's a bug somewhere.

Maybe. I don’t know. I always do real time bounces with MH. I like the MH console mixer, limiter, character and channel strips that just aren’t available in offline bounces. So my RTB always sound different and better than offline.