Hemmick Reef said:
Sorry to go slightly off topic but what is the 'Brick' like. I have recently sold a tfpro p3 and want to get a preamp/channel strip.
I was looking at some of the £200-£400 strips with comp/eq but I am thinking that GT 'The Brick' would do a better job.
I have a Brick and I like it. My other main preamp is a Great River MP-2NV, which is killer as a bass DI, but the Brick also great for bass DI when I'm looking for a "rounder" tone. The Brick works fine as a clean tube mic preamp also. The only drawbacks with the Brick are that there isn't a lot of gain if you're using passive ribbon mics (I think it's something like 55 db gain), and it's a very basic one gain stage setup (no master output cut/boost). So it's fairly critical what levels you feed it, to get the tone you want. Also the power switch is on the back, which drives me nuts. Otherwise it's a great little mono tube preamp.... definitely a good bang for the buck.
If you're only looking for a tube DI and not a dual-purpose DI and preamp, also check out the TAB Funkenwerk V71 DI:
http://www.mercenary.com/tadiprv7.html
Demeter also makes a great tube DI.
Is there an advantage to compressing before the AD/DA converters to warrent buying something like a focusrite Twin Trakpro or Tla 5060 and then using it to also process a mix, or will my UAD-1 do all I need there?
I don't use outboard compression when tracking my own bass playing because I can either play smoothly enough, or re-track easily if I blow it and hit a note too hard and clip the converters. If I was running a pro studio I'd want a compressor ahead of the converter to handle players who were a little more aggressive or inconsistent. That's the only reason I'd use outboard compression on bass. I can get everything I need for compression during mixing from the UAD-1 LA-2A or Fairchild, and I'd prefer to do it in the mix stage where I can hit the undo button, when I screw something up.
It's only that some people say that processing through hardware adds that something that software cannot do?
Well, that gets into the issue of the quality of plugins vs. outboard. I think the UAD-1 compressors are outrageously good, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't also love to own one of the very best outboard compressors out there, like a Manley, Crane Song, or Pendulum. But for me, it would be something I'd want to use when mixing, not tracking. And my A/D-D/A converters aren't the kind of quality I'd want right now for shooting recorded audio out into analog gear, and then bringing it back into the computer a second time.