Jim Lill is back.
Great video, and I'm an EE, so apart from some minutia in the video I might word differently etc, I agree 100%. And I've been saying it for decades.
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"I'm just a performer"
- Thread starter crazycloud
- Start date
Jim Lill is back.
Great video, and I'm an EE, so apart from some minutia in the video I might word differently etc, I agree 100%. And I've been saying it for decades.
I love this guy's tests 
Audiovoodoo is definitely real.
Audiovoodoo is definitely real.
He is the son of a good friend and HS classmate of mine. Sadly his dad passed away a few years ago.
carsonchilders
Carson Childers
I've had a bunch of people send me this so I am just going to copy and paste my initial thoughts. Tell me if I am off base here.
The assumption that built in preamps in a focusrite is garbage is a bad premise off the bat. They’re much better than they’re given credit for, technology has come a long way in the last 20 years. Built in preamps can sound great and most do.
He’s completely wrong about turning down the output fader or over gaining for tone as a regular practice. Why would there be an output fader on basically every “racked” Neve clone. I’ve heard it literally thousands of times (and witnessed) that plenty of people prefer to run things hot. Also, the APIs 3124V just bought literally have a 3:1 switch AND an output fader because you drive the snot out of it. Also, the amount of times I have shown a person sitting next to me how much better the APIs sound than the Neve 1073OPX. But the 1073OPX can't be pushed. So there are shootouts where a behringer unit sounds better to me. But that's why the 1073OPX sucks.
And there is more than one way to gainstage in a console that would allow you to keep your fader wherever you feel like.
Saturation and distortion is all about transients. When you look at wave forms you can see when you start chopping transients off and you decide if you like that or not. And if it sounds good. And how the preamp reacts when it is in a state that it starts cutting off transients.
Talking about slew rate. The API sound is the “quickness” in the transient. That’s generally considered stew rate, and hey maybe it is maybe it isn’t. But here’s a great video where dudes swap op amps (ONLY) in API preamps and you can hear an obvious difference in transients. Listen for yourself, I did a blind shootout with my wife on my home speaker system and she had preferences as well. And she could also hear transient speed. Professor Dan's 2520 Opamp Shootout. Skip to 4:25
ANNNNND finally, a lot of these things inform workflow preference. Here’s a great analog summing shootout (skip to the last few minutes) where you can hear the difference between brands emulating their signature sound into summing boxes. AND IT ISNT EVEN PUSHED YET!
I guess he’s never saying all preamps sound the same but there’s a certain bit of it implied. But the take away should be voodoo magic continues to not be real, use your ears, place the microphone well and emphasize performance/music creation. If you can't hear a difference, there may not be one and that shouldn't inform your self worth/feel like you lack skill.
The assumption that built in preamps in a focusrite is garbage is a bad premise off the bat. They’re much better than they’re given credit for, technology has come a long way in the last 20 years. Built in preamps can sound great and most do.
He’s completely wrong about turning down the output fader or over gaining for tone as a regular practice. Why would there be an output fader on basically every “racked” Neve clone. I’ve heard it literally thousands of times (and witnessed) that plenty of people prefer to run things hot. Also, the APIs 3124V just bought literally have a 3:1 switch AND an output fader because you drive the snot out of it. Also, the amount of times I have shown a person sitting next to me how much better the APIs sound than the Neve 1073OPX. But the 1073OPX can't be pushed. So there are shootouts where a behringer unit sounds better to me. But that's why the 1073OPX sucks.
And there is more than one way to gainstage in a console that would allow you to keep your fader wherever you feel like.
Saturation and distortion is all about transients. When you look at wave forms you can see when you start chopping transients off and you decide if you like that or not. And if it sounds good. And how the preamp reacts when it is in a state that it starts cutting off transients.
Talking about slew rate. The API sound is the “quickness” in the transient. That’s generally considered stew rate, and hey maybe it is maybe it isn’t. But here’s a great video where dudes swap op amps (ONLY) in API preamps and you can hear an obvious difference in transients. Listen for yourself, I did a blind shootout with my wife on my home speaker system and she had preferences as well. And she could also hear transient speed. Professor Dan's 2520 Opamp Shootout. Skip to 4:25
ANNNNND finally, a lot of these things inform workflow preference. Here’s a great analog summing shootout (skip to the last few minutes) where you can hear the difference between brands emulating their signature sound into summing boxes. AND IT ISNT EVEN PUSHED YET!
I guess he’s never saying all preamps sound the same but there’s a certain bit of it implied. But the take away should be voodoo magic continues to not be real, use your ears, place the microphone well and emphasize performance/music creation. If you can't hear a difference, there may not be one and that shouldn't inform your self worth/feel like you lack skill.
I love Jim Lill's videos and this one is aligned with what I've found. I'm hard pressed to find a large difference between mic pres. Now treatment with compression or eq or reverb- that makes a difference. But modern mic pres are all about convenience, within the range of human hearing, they all work well.
I've recorded and been recorded a bunch and for a quite a while. I wanted Neve gear because all my fave albums were recorded on Neve gear. But turns out that is mostly cargo cult.
And my main advice is the recording matters a ton less than the performance. Beatles? great songs, largely great performances. By modern recording standards? 4 track? 8 track? and not particularly hi-fi. Same with motown. Robert Johnson? Basically a field recording.
Almost any reasonable modern setup will can a good recording. There is another cat that did similar- record a session with some nice mics through nice preamps, and another at the same time through sm57s and consumer preamps. And frankly they both sound really good. Is there a difference? Some, but mainly from mixdown.
Want to improve your recording? Record a better performance.
When I got the stems for some of the sessions I love, I found that what was on the stems was a killer performance. Mixing and mastering maybe polished that performance. But it didn't make that much difference.
It's the surfer, not the surfboard to a large degree. The gear matters much less. It's unfortunately true with basses too. Name your fave bassist- their gear isn't really what makes them sound like them. It's a part, but it's them- the experience, the hands, what they express.
Get out there and make some music.
I've recorded and been recorded a bunch and for a quite a while. I wanted Neve gear because all my fave albums were recorded on Neve gear. But turns out that is mostly cargo cult.
And my main advice is the recording matters a ton less than the performance. Beatles? great songs, largely great performances. By modern recording standards? 4 track? 8 track? and not particularly hi-fi. Same with motown. Robert Johnson? Basically a field recording.
Almost any reasonable modern setup will can a good recording. There is another cat that did similar- record a session with some nice mics through nice preamps, and another at the same time through sm57s and consumer preamps. And frankly they both sound really good. Is there a difference? Some, but mainly from mixdown.
Want to improve your recording? Record a better performance.
When I got the stems for some of the sessions I love, I found that what was on the stems was a killer performance. Mixing and mastering maybe polished that performance. But it didn't make that much difference.
It's the surfer, not the surfboard to a large degree. The gear matters much less. It's unfortunately true with basses too. Name your fave bassist- their gear isn't really what makes them sound like them. It's a part, but it's them- the experience, the hands, what they express.
Get out there and make some music.
Yup!
The Robert Johnson reference is key.
A song will stand or fall on its own. No amount of recording wizardry will fix it.
Jim's video has some validity, and a lot of problems. I find this to be the case with most of his content. It's sensational and good for driving clicks towards his courses, so in that regard they're probably doing great. I also find his presentation in his videos to be entertaining, and that's generally how I view his content; as entertainment.
His hypothesis is flawed, as has been stated here and in a very lengthy and hilarious thread over on Gearspace. Additionally, he does not make clear in his testing methodology how the microphone split occurred. He also does not adequately address the differences in impedance between preamps. He happens to have chosen two within a range that work pretty well with for the testing conducted. Would that still be the case when using a vintage ribbon mic? Will a preamp with variable impedance not sound different when selecting different impedances? Spoiler alert, they will sound appreciably different when using a dynamic microphone, and perhaps a tiny bit different when using a condenser. Lastly, he presents this as a sort of be all end all with respect to all preamps. I watched the video on my iPad last night while I was making dinner, so it's possible that I missed some of these details and am happy to be corrected, but my takeaway was that he states all preamps basically don't matter on their own, and then proceeds to compare only two. The lack of a scientifically significant sample size makes the whole thing silly.
If his premise and associated video title been "I compared two mic preamps at wildly different price points and they exhibited very little difference" then I would have zero issue with it. To be more sensational he could have titled it "Mic preamps are largely pretty similar at a variety of price points and not some silver bullet that leads to a great recording" then I would also have zero issue with it. As is, it's quite misleading.
His hypothesis is flawed, as has been stated here and in a very lengthy and hilarious thread over on Gearspace. Additionally, he does not make clear in his testing methodology how the microphone split occurred. He also does not adequately address the differences in impedance between preamps. He happens to have chosen two within a range that work pretty well with for the testing conducted. Would that still be the case when using a vintage ribbon mic? Will a preamp with variable impedance not sound different when selecting different impedances? Spoiler alert, they will sound appreciably different when using a dynamic microphone, and perhaps a tiny bit different when using a condenser. Lastly, he presents this as a sort of be all end all with respect to all preamps. I watched the video on my iPad last night while I was making dinner, so it's possible that I missed some of these details and am happy to be corrected, but my takeaway was that he states all preamps basically don't matter on their own, and then proceeds to compare only two. The lack of a scientifically significant sample size makes the whole thing silly.
If his premise and associated video title been "I compared two mic preamps at wildly different price points and they exhibited very little difference" then I would have zero issue with it. To be more sensational he could have titled it "Mic preamps are largely pretty similar at a variety of price points and not some silver bullet that leads to a great recording" then I would also have zero issue with it. As is, it's quite misleading.
carsonchilders
Carson Childers
Yeah everyone has a different "line" when it comes to clickbait-ness (I say this as an unfortunate purveyor of it myself) but I think both the title AND the framing in the video was in a bit of bad faith.
Admittedly amateur in my recording (tho I did study such things in college)
but I stopped worrying "gear mojo" after reading Gabriel Roth's Sh*tty Is Pretty essays on Funk recording
"it is much more valuable to be creative and resourceful than to have all the 'correct' equipment"
Not to say that Neves and other lauded gear are to be dismissed
Just that getting a good recording is more skill than it is tech.
but I stopped worrying "gear mojo" after reading Gabriel Roth's Sh*tty Is Pretty essays on Funk recording
"it is much more valuable to be creative and resourceful than to have all the 'correct' equipment"
Not to say that Neves and other lauded gear are to be dismissed
Just that getting a good recording is more skill than it is tech.
Pretty funny from a guy who built his recorded sound on using vintage recording gear and tracking like they did at Chess and Stax, but then the quote by itself lacks the context of the rest of the essay. He’s correct that it’s not the gear much of the time. Except when it is.
As far as Jim Lill, if he really thinks that Focusite sounds like a Neve he’s got a problem. If that’s the case, then all amplifiers sound the same, too.
To be fair to Jim, if you keep a Neve or any other transformer-equipped preamp below the point of saturation it's very likely to be basically indistinguishable from a Focusrite or other entirely linear interface preamp. It's only when driven to the point of non-linearity that these types of preamps really sound any different. Even when saturated the differences are inherently pretty small. That said, for him to say that they're broadly indistinguishable is just silly, and the only thing it proves is that his hypothesis, his testing methodology, or both were flawed.
This.
To paraphrase what I wrote on a recording forum where this was posted:
It would be wrong to assume the video was made for people who are trying to understand circuit design, or professional recording engineers who aren't looking for a magic bullet to make their records better. We all know if something is more or less flat in frequency response, and more or less linear in its amplification, it's going to sound an awful lot like another piece of gear with similar characteristics. Of course, we deliberately clip and distort things all the time, so for me, how a piece of gear behaves in that scenario is part of the criteria for its usefulness. And while I don't think he's completely "debunked" the idea of mic preamplifiers sounding different, I'm 100% on board with the message that people are way too hung up on equipment, and gear manufacturers/dealers are all too happy to lean into mythology to sell you yet another expensive thing you don't really need.
Has he actually done a video where he finds the tone? It can't be that hard can it?
Clickbaity title aside, his hypothesis has some merit even if his methodology is less than robust.
But his premise is both provocative and intriguing from a “stage 1 myth busting” perspective. If someone was to apply more rigorous methodology and isolate some of the critical variables, I’d be really interested to see the results.
But his premise is both provocative and intriguing from a “stage 1 myth busting” perspective. If someone was to apply more rigorous methodology and isolate some of the critical variables, I’d be really interested to see the results.
