Lil' Kim, if you were talking about microphones I would agree, but preamps ... OK, yes, some of the entry-level models are poor from the standpoint of overload margin and/or immunity to RFI, and have phantom powering circuits that don't make the grade, and overload indicators that are worse than useless. And some have poor operating controls and are noisier than they should have to be. All granted.
But those are objectively measurable characteristics, not sound quality as such; for some users they won't matter (e.g. the preamp noise may be completely "swamped" by venue noise, especially when high-output microphones are used; some electret microphones aren't affected much by substandard phantom powering, and so on). With microphones it's painful--the really good sounding ones are far more expensive than the merely good ones, especially where directional microphones are concerned. But there are (say) $250 preamps that I find really good sound-wise as well as (in most respects) technically, and the sonic improvement that you'd get by trading up from them to the very best high-priced preamps simply isn't as great as the improvement you'd get by investing similarly in the microphones.
--best regards
Topic: recommended pre to run with Neumann 184's (Read 6118 times)