jlepore wrote: We had done tests with the Octopre, profire, ada8000, and the native preamps in a SC48. The profire and octo's were just about identical with the 48 slightly better and the ada slightly worse.
The surprising thing was HOW close they were. It was really nitpicking to hear the differences.
It's difficult to evaluate a pre-amp channel or two until you put it through rigorous listening tests using many different input sources ... drums, vocals, acoustic instruments, etc. The differences you hear may be subtle, but in my experience, those subtle differences become quite obvious when you are running MANY channels simultaneously as you would in a real work application. It's about what the front end as a whole sounds like including the output bus electronics ... not just one channel.
Cheers,
Mark