Look at what I do, look at what I cost. How many times have we tried to put together a balanced setup and, even though we've taken care to install a magnificent program on a state-of-the-art computer, we have the interface of our dreams installed and our monitors are the almost absolute truth, every take we record goes through a cheap little mixer. All this does is keep a bottleneck in place where our interests collide, since the overall quality of our recordings, no matter how well we process them, will never exceed that of our takes, with all the distortion produced in the various mixing processes piling up on top of the initial distortion.
The preamp I'm facing today is admittedly a poor option if we aren't aware of our reality: lots of features and little money, in other words, I want to record well but I don't know with what…
We can dream up home systems that satisfy us deeply, ideal systems that we can only keep in our imagination, but being realistic we can only buy BEHRINGER, since if we even seriously consider an SE Electronics it's beyond our basic salary. This is where today's preamp enters the contest: look at what I do and, above all, what I cost.
In our home studio
The first step in a studio is our flagship mic, which tends to be the best your money can buy; next comes your recording channel, which, as we were saying, controls that all-important thing called signal, and it can't just be what passes through the mixer for monitoring. That means the quality of the input we have and, in turn, the minimum standard of the whole setup for those of us who record track by track.
As an end customer you can look for the cheapest thing on the market, all those deals we all regularly get. They're not just toys, I can tell you: they work, and much better than anyone expected a few years ago. But you can also weigh up a set of options, solutions conceived with a certain use of the brain called intelligence, that is, balancing quality with the pragmatism of the coolest, most calculating mind: thinking about what you have, what you can afford and, between the two, what gives you something extra.
The TP2
It's one of those curious possibilities where, while being aware of the product's net quality, technical possibilities of unusual flexibility for the price open up before you, and although it has competitors, here every peseta/euro we spend counts for something.
The preamp itself provides two channels of a mid/high-quality mixer on the market. What does this mean? That we can compete as if we had two or three preamps from a more than decent mixer for recording takes (two at a time, mind you), and we won't have any more compression than what the TP2 gives us. At the same time we have a decent EQ, with the color of an AUX7, which covers the basic needs, all topped off with digital outputs included.
In operation: A good wrench for anyone who knows mechanics
All the TP2's knobs feel very smooth (you can tell they sent me a new one), but here we find that the switches are well finished, of a certain quality. The preamp section is quite complete, with phase reverse and phantom power per channel. When you push the gain you realize that the first stage is a class AB op-amp, but the crossover and the top of the gain range aren't faked, showing that with a little correction, class AB clearly has its place in the market.
The distortion levels are more than acceptable. As Douglas Self (design engineer at Soundcraft Electronics) rightly said, working with op-amps delivers surprising results if a minimum of decency is maintained when designing the circuitry, especially when it comes to mic preamps.
Recording vocals with a high-end mic is very good at levels that don't exceed 125 dB, with serious flaws noticeable at higher levels. In any case, the size of the samples (and anyone who wants to listen to me, that's up to them) is never huge, but we won't be lacking anything either. The compressor acts very quickly and quite accurately,
I miss a proper release, despite the good results. For those who know what recording is all about: wake up, guys! Here you have a good wrench for anyone who knows mechanics.
COMPRESSION: a small miracle
Especially for so little money, it holds up with effective results and transparent operation. But don't think it's a 160; it's closer to a 166, with an added advantage: it gives you the ratio from a single overall compression knob, so even if you're not skilled in that art you'll get great results just by relying on the sensitivity of your ears.
OUTPUTS
It has both a balanced analog output per channel and S/PDIF and ADAT optical, with a switch for 44.1, 48 and 96 kHz sample rates, which gives us possibilities that on many other units cost as much as the TP2, and here they come as standard. I haven't mentioned the AUX7 because in this preamp it only serves to color the signal, which on the other hand is very nice; in this case it adds no quality and isn't a necessity at all, I can assure you, and God can come and get me, or the "foreigner" who designed it.
CONCLUSION
This is probably the best gadget on the market for what it costs. You can pass it off as something better and, at the same time, seek out your mix's "own character". Now, if what you want is million-dollar gear, this isn't that. This one works and pulls its weight... realize one thing: your money is unlikely to be worth more.
