Would not gain structure dictate the personality of any preamp? Just "pushing gain around 54" has no bearing on saturation as there is a dance between input, the gain and how any amp will react. For instance, a hotter signal would precipitate a lower gain setting to achieve a "creamy saturation" and a whisper of an input signal would necessitate cranking up the gain to compensate. Correct and apropos gain staging can only achieve the desired result. The importance of electric guitarists while using single ended amplifiers in regard to their use of tweaking the volume pot to find the sweet spot is a good example of how an input signal defines saturation. Pushing gain to 54 with no signal present would render only silence except for the self noise of the signal chain.

 

If you want to see the harmonics [and aliasing...] a plugin generates, it's better to use sinewave [tm] than noise.

 

Midas pres are really nice!

 

I had a drumbus yesterday, and as first insert i had Arturia v76 preamp plug to try it out. After some processing i noticed the preamp smeared the transients in a unconvincing way, so i quickly swaped it, and used voxengo warmifier, a very subtle plugin. But as first insert it made huge difference. afterwards came a fuse vqa-154, a fuse vcl 25 comp (-1db), WA Outlaw (made impact on punch) & transreckon, it sounded nice overall, but the warmifier did it for me, clarity & warmth instantly!

 

It's well known,distortions devastate transients.
You'll can find on the web many producers/engineers who put a compressor or a transient designer before the distortion and not after,,in order emphasize the transients before they will be "broken" or attenuated by the distortion.But your solution may work too,but the result will be different.

 

Sounds logical, i just play around to see if i can achieve a punchy but also warm sound with the druming, more kind of sounddesign than classic mixing i guess.

 

no! use you EARS !

 

I‘ll give my best, still learning daily