It's exciting to witness someone doing what had never been done before.

 

It's a pretty bad video (it's fun to watch, I can give him that) because the video wouldn't exist if he had taken anyone's opinion before making it. It's basically he making up a strawman and fighting him for 50 minutes, and when he gets super close to the actual answer (gain staging), he dismisses it immediately because on footage all faders are at unity.

 

I've opened all the outboard preamps i've owned, and can confirm there's a focusrite scarlett inside all of them so i'm not surprised by the test results.

 

Interesting.

 

I’d love to see the heads explode at Gearslutz. Truth is the dude proved something most people are too proud & pretentious to admit. He should team up with Ethan Winer and make an audio myth buster series.

 

What did him prove? That every preamp during normal expected use works the exact same? If it's clean, it's clean. No one with a brain ever argued that. He made that up.

 

Ethan Winer who told you can put your monitors on a simple stuff filled cardboard box, because the main mechanical impulsions are supposed to be in the monitors themselves, and not between the speaker and anything else.

Love this guy, chasing truth for decades.
I know his chasing for more than 20 year.

@shinjiya
Are you serious ?
How many ppl pay thousands dollars to buy BETTER preamps, and tells you at the same time to NEVER clip them.

search "preamp" on Gearspace ... you can read for decades
I will give you the first one :
https://gearspace.com/board/so-much...-best-ultra-clean-preamp-pair-sony-c800g.html

And what the first tell him to buy ?
1000 dollars single preamp
John Hardy M-1
http://www.johnhardyco.com/prices.html

Clean is clean you said ?
...

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2026 at 12:28 PM

It is a very simple system: Neve is historically transformer coupled, and the sound characteristic people seek from Neve is derived exactly from driving those transformers into distortion. Are you going to tell me it's not that? There's a whole market out there trying to get the closest to Marinair transformers, be it digital or analog, because the distortion characteristics aren't the same between every transformer. That's just science. If you want clean preamps, you use it clean. Associating "the Neve sound" to the sound of a clean preamp is simply not true and has never been true at all.

Edit: worth noting for the people who haven't seen the video is that Jim's whole argument for distortion not being "the Neve sound" is because he can pull up footage from Nashville, and they track with faders at unity, meaning that they would be sending crazy voltage to the console. Make of that what you will. The concept of gain staging doesn't exist in Nashville, it seems.

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2026 at 12:53 PM

The problem is that almost everyone wants to treat mixing and 'engineering' as a matter of taste rather than knowledge.

In other words, people want to approach mixing without 'wasting' time on actual learning. But at the same time, these people will go to great lengths to deceive themselves and their fanbase into thinking that their decades of ooga-boogaing random shit until mixes started sounding good were 'years spent on developing skills, experience and a deep understanding of the fundamental principles involved' - when in reality, they're still, after all these years, just throwing random plugins (all of which remain magic black boxes to them) at the problem because all they know/have is their taste.

In short, those who would benefit the most (the 'try random shit/i want to believe' crowd) are also the least least likely to even be open to the idea, as it runs contrary to the taste/magic based approach.

Preaching to the choir etc.

--

To be fair though, people who lack taste and approach mixing exclusively as a knowledge-problem (the other extreme) often end up with worse results.

 

Reading some replies here and on gs it sounds like people never recorded a vocal their entire life.

A raw vocal, even if the technique is great, is VERY dynamic. Peaks 20 dB+ higher than the body. No one can't afford to clip a preamp. If I slightly driving it during verse, in the chorus the audio will be smashed to pieces. And no, having the vocalist pull back from the microphone too much, it changes the timbre of the voice. Or if you have some long, sustained wovels, those are the absolute worst to saturate. If anything, between the noise floor and a safe headroom (for the vocalist to belt away), there's quite a narrow gain sweet spot.

This is why the typical chain is preamp into compression - let the compression dynamically apply "saturation" via envelope distortion. Some people like to use the 1176 style, or cleaner like the CL/LA - they do fine for their respective purpose.

Except for very specific, intentional situations, driving a preamp into distortion (with vocals), is a pretty big no-no.

Also the guy doesn't say that all preamps sound the same, he is on a quest (as with the microphones) to find out WHAT exactly makes the character of a preamp. And, to no ones surprise is the EQ curve.

 

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There is no evidence that gain staging changes the sound of real pre amplifiers in an audible way as long as you do not cross extreme lines or it just being horrible.

 

I think you haven't watched the video. He says the character cannot be from distortion because distortion is too loud and you need to pull the faders down, but the faders are always at unity in recorded sessions. That is a dumb argument because there's no proof the preamps aren't going elsewhere, or if they even intended to saturate the signal in the footage he shows.

 

Yes. It seems to me that 99% of plugins' skeuomorphic design stem from this illusion of color and magic character; otherwise people would just use FabFilter and their copycats.

He did address distortion and color by abusing the expensive gear and, after much testing, realized that while it can obviously be produced, it's not special at all.

 

Not sure about that, where's your evidence? Any gear with transformers and tubes in it will sound different, different transformers DO sound different to each other depending on their construction. And different versions of the same model tube will sound different, e. g. I have heard a modern tube replaced in a Millenia NSEQ with a vintage Telefunken tube and the difference in tone was shocking, the Telefunken sounded Finland musical, the modern tube sounded like IC's, thinner and brighter, this was at conservative operating levels. Both tubes and transformers are adding harmonics at any level, when pushed you get saturation and soft clipping that can't be achieved with an IC preamp. Today you can just use a transparent pre and plugins to get the cooler, in fact Kush have preamp and plugins designed to be used this way, so does Metric Halo & UAD Apollo.

 

You indeed get into a very comfortable situation when you just do not make big statements about fantastic behaviors.

Only the people which make claims get themself into this uncomfortable situation of having to provide evidence.

 

Last edited: Jun 18, 2026 at 9:10 PM

Most of us are talking about audio, not psychology, but knock yourself out with meaningless words. Thousands of engineers and millions of recordings are testament to the sound of gear, it is not my opinion and is acknowledged by people with more knowledge or experience than you. Even a cheap analyser like Plugin doctor verifies this. I'm also assuming you have NEVER use any good sound equipment based on the evidence you have made available.

 

I doubt anyone who didn't pay thousands of dollars for marginally better than consumer grade gear is angry about the results shown in the video.

 

I find it mind boggling that even here people seem extremely confused about what the video was about. At normal operation, harmonic content is at best subtle, which indeed makes a Focusrite and a Neve sound exactly the same.

The issue is implying that a concept such as saturation is completely made up. A concept easily verifiable via Hammerstein analysis. That is the whole point of why a Class-A and a Transformer-coupled preamp can't sound the same. They don't even produce the same harmonic content under stress, which is entirely the point why you would want a 1073 over a Behringer.

 

Who are supposed to be getting angry about this kind of a video? Do the Neve owners get angry someone with a $200 Focusrite think it sounds like a Neve? Or do the Focusrite owners get angry that since their Focusrite sounds like a Neve, there has to be some other reason why their output sounds subpar, and now they need a new excuse?