Neve 1073 DPA vs. Universal Audio 610 Pre Amp

This is a Pre Amp Comparison

AMS NEVE 1073 DPA
Universal Audio 610

[johncameron]

I was surprised at the results, I preferred #2 all the way through but didn't expect the Neve to have more character than the 610! Bravo NEVE!!!!

[griploc]

i own both preamps technically(the 610 solo and the neve 1073N) and i could tell right away with the first phrase from the vocalist that preamp 1 was the 610 and the 1073 just sounds sweeter and bigger and warmer. they both are amazing in their own right and have their uses 

[ArcticBulletNation]

The first time I heard Preamp 2, I immediately knew it was the Neve. The Neve has this awesome classic, distortion and frequency harmonics.

[G_handle]

Even though this is years old, it’s still relevant. What I would add to what others have said.

IMO, and experience, Everyone’s first Mic should be a Dynamic (Shure SM57 studio, 58 live each under $100)(or their big brothers for $400+ are the SM7b or the EV RE-20).

The reason is the Room. Dynamics reject far more of the Room, and LDCs hear everything.
So until you can invest in Room Acoustics, LDCs will cause you more issues.

The Source to Room ratio is critical in a Bad/Live Room, and with a Dynamic you can nearly eliminate it.
(Take an SM7B and you can get right up on it with minimal Pops and Proximity Effect, LDC no way)

And for all the YouTube expert advice out there suggesting you Need an LDC or you’re somehow not professional, recall that Quincy Jones and Bruce Swedien chose from every $10000 microphone on earth, at Westlake Studios, a $400 Shure SM7 Michael Jackson, on a little album called Thriller, the highest selling album of all time, and likely the most recognizable vocals ever recorded.

Now, as others have said, LDCs have active electronics (that’s why they need 48v phantom power) in the body of the microphone, and are therefore produce relatively“hot signals”.
Dynamics have no active electronics and rely on the next devices in the chain to provide additional gain to bring their very low levels up to “Line”.

Therefore, a LDC can patch right into an “Interface Preamp”, which are usually a few really cheap ICs purely for gain, and be set fairly low, exhibiting very little additional coloration to what’s coming from the microphone.
Dynamics however need a lot of gain, and encouraging you to crank the Interface Preamps to the max, where they often sound horrible, and end up corrupting the signal coming from the microphone, leading people to think Dynamics sound bad.

They were good enough for Michael Jackson, but not you?

A couple of things you can do:

First, Don’t crank garbage Preamps!

Instead, there’s a three step workaround. A) Solo the microphone, turn down the Pre and turn UP the volume on your headphones, and Listen to what preamp gain level Sounds the best, that’s the level to record that microphone. B) your going to have to set a headphone mix of whatever other music you’re listening to while you perform LOW enough to not blow your head off at that headphone volume, get your artist mix to taste, and record. C) for your real mix, that mic was recorded super low, but you can add nearly endless gain In Your DAW without any of the negative artifacts of cranking cheap Preamps. Pump it back up (or dare I say Normalize All your tracks to -18dBFS RMS /-6dBFS Peak) before you mix.

The other thing you can do, is bump the gain on the way in. And there are a number of ways to do that.

But before that, let’s say this: in the good ol days of Analog when we were recording to Tape, that tape had a noise floor and hiss. So too did all the electronics in the signal chain. So it was Analog Religious Practice to get the best Signal to Noise Ratio from the Microphone to the Tape. That meant pushing Every gain stage right up to (and often into), distortion, to get the signal as far away from the floor as possible. With old electronics, every device that Added gain to a signal, also added its own “Color” to that signal as it passed through. Technically that “color” was Distortion and gear designers we’re trying Not to have any distortion, the goal was straight wire, but Musically that distortion proved to be useful, and producers and engineers began to see it as a feature rather than a bug.

So Mastering your gear meant testing everything you had to find it’s Floor where the noise was unacceptable, it’s Ceiling where the distortion was unacceptable, it’s Clean Spot where it produced the cleanest possible signal, and it’s Sweet Spot, where it wasn’t just passing the signal, but also adding it’s own unique flavor.

I would also note that, many of the “boutique” “outboard” preamps of today, began life as the Onboard console preamps of the past. The Neve 1073, API 312, UA 610, Focusrite ISA, SSL VHD, these all came out of desks and were boxed up and given power supplies and I/O so they could be used without the $100, 000 board they were in.


So back to tracking your SM57 / SM7B. If you patch it straight into pretty much any modern Interface, and follow my procedure A, you’ll record pretty much the cleanest vocals your untreated room can produce. Then bump it up in the DAW, and add EQ, Compression, DeEssing, whatever you do, in plugins.

But, if you so choose, you can add that gain, with or without additional color, Before you press record.

(Let me inject here, that if going the straight route, the Audient Interfaces, sound amazing, and are the only interfaces I know of that use the same Preamps as in their $100, 000 consoles. That’s because they used chips from the beginning, but did it right. They also come in models for all budget sizes, and again you Will use the pres.)

If you have an interface (or desk) with mediocre Preamps that get worse when you boost the gain. There are what I call “Clean Gain Boxes”, that essentially Add the active electronics in a Condenser to a Dynamic microphone. They take 48v Phantom and boost the mic signal 20-25dB with virtually no additional noise or coloration, which allows you to turn down your interface Preamps into a zone that sounds better.

Thing is, they ain’t cheap. The Cloudlifter, the most popular, is $150. The Fethead is $90, sounds as good, I have both.

Now for Live Audio, they are very useful problem solvers, but in the studio, there are other solutions. For one, I think of them as the gain that should have been in the interface in the first place. Expensive interfaces have plenty of gain, cheap ones got cheap by cutting something, and that was the preamps. But spending $150 more to get what you might save with a cheap interface doesn’t make sense. Invest in a better interface. (Again, bang for buck in 2020, Audient. SSL. Then UAD.)

And the results will Not be better than using procedure A. Because, the sound quality issue is what level you use the interface Pre gain at. (PS, this will all be moot eventually, soon even. The same way your mobile phones and laptops have gotten insane, so have the chips inside of all electronics including the preamps in interfaces. Good gain chips And converter chips cost next to nothing compared with 10 years ago. Imagine 10 years from now.)

So that’s the clean gain story.
But if you’re adding gain, you may think why not a little color?

For dinosaurs like me, massaging every signal on the way in was what the game was about.
However, recording clean, or conservatively colored, then processing later was always a thing too.
And, since I own all this gear, and it sounds so nice, might as well use it twice.

[KrematoriumStudio]

THAT NEVE IS I thought the thicker bottom send of Pre #2 was coming from the UA610 tube! lol AWSOME VIDEO MAN!!!

[stringks]

I use 2 UA-6176, never been harsh to my ears and I LOOOVE them. It’s all taste in the end imho.

[EddieJarnowski]

I chose #2 preamp for all. Guess i'm going to get one now lol. It was either a 1073 or a 610.

Thank you for helping me choose!
Great video!

[midi]

Not to be negative here, but a good condenser mic would have given much more detail and transient information to compare than an SM58. If that's all ya got, then that's all ya got, but it can't show the preamps off properly. 

[DanMarcelino]

the neve has wayy more mids going on and is pretty chunky, the UA is very warm and has a smooth clean tubey sound, two very impressive and useful pres!!

[jeremyray]

I just like that you used a 58 instead of some Epic microphone no mortal can afford. Everyone watching this video should know what to expect from a 58:)

[DawnLauryn]

I preferred the Neve. It was a bit more dry, but sounded natural while also eliminating semblance in the female vocals. BTW, this was a really good shoot out. I wish I could find one this good for mic shoot outs, but I can't. Especially re: vocal mics where most of them look like artists just trying to promote themselves vs. giving viewers a good representation of the mics being compared. So many people belting out their vocals and trying to sing like divas vs. letting us hear what the MIC is doing. Thanks for sharing!!! P.S. I thought the girl did a great job. I wish she would have been the one demoing mics! I can't believe someone made such a rude comment about her, but whatever...some people are just jerks and don't care about other people's feelings, so I hope my comments help her feel better. Constructive criticism, I can see the sense in that, but he was just being a nasty, inconsiderate person. Haters gonna hate. It's a demo FFS, not the Grammys!

[nocuh]

For me it was obvious as soon as I heard the midrange of the Male vocals with PRE AMP #2 [the Neve]

[jules]

I don't know if I'm fooling myself, I could be. But I instantly wow'ed when I heard preamp #2, despite the fact that I came here to hear preamp #1 since I was reading great things about it. And I'm listening on macbook pro speakers.

[hazybrain]

Cool shootout. Neve wins hands down for me...

[muhammadsarmadhussain]

I was listening in the headphones and I instantly knew that amp 1 is UAD 610. I like the tube sound.

[demanel]

NEVE sonido abierto y natural, el mismo que facusrite en la serie ISA, diseñados por el mago del sonido Ruper Neve

[RUDOLPHLYRICS]

I was shocked that the 610 was #1. It's the one I was liking more during the vid

[robertjericho]

both sound great. I have the 610 so I new right away that it was #1 but I liked the Neve a lot on the female vocals and distortion guitar. The 610 was better in my opinion, on the clean and slightly dirty electric guitar.

[rickneibauer]

I thought the Neve sounded warmer on vox, but the 610 sounded better with guitars... more clarity.  Thank you!

[samfowles]

Thanks for taking the time to do this- it helped to confirm my thinking regarding my own preamp preferences.