Got a call from a friend to do an impromptu session on Monday night with a stripped down version of her band. For those of you following closely you’ll recognize that I only have eight channels of preamps currently since I haven’t ordered channels 9-16 just yet. I’ve got the converters, just no preamps on 9-16. I found a studio here in Seattle that rents out gear and reserved a Yamaha MLA7 for the session. It’s a transformer’less design like my Line Audio 8MP, but I suspect it will be a little lower quality. I’ll stick the less essential tracks on that and keep the focal points of the performance on my 8MP, which constantly amazes me with how incredible it sounds for a preamp with no transformers. It’s clean and accurate like you’d expect for something with no transformers, but it has serious weight to the transients like you’d expect to find in something with a bunch of iron or steel in the mix. Maybe the Yamaha will surprise me. Either way, I’ll be set for the session. It’s a live performance with drums, electric bass, keys (I think a Rhodes or Wurlitzer type sound), tenor sax, trombone, lead vocal and harmony vocal, all of which will be tracked lived despite the fact that isolation between performers in my space is basically non-existent. It’ll still work well and I’ll make it sound great. Hopefully it’ll be a release they’ll let me show other folks, and if so I’ll be sure to post it here.
