AMS Neve 1073 & Vocal Tracking Compressors

Yes the 1073 module against the AMS handwired module. As stated later in the thread, the BAE was a bit rolled off in the highs (aka darker) and the AMS a little crisper (aka modern?) but the BAE was closer to my og 1073 which was a touch less "dark". All tests done blind, including DI'ed electric guitar so that even the performance was identical. I finally ended up with a few BAE 1028s and even those now have been replaced because I use the PEQ2s in my console. Anyone wanna buy a pristine BAE 1028? lol

Mind you the differences were VERY small. A Tree Audio Branch (v1) that I had also had later was a bigger difference... one tube preamp and solid state preamp is a lovely toolset for vocals.

I can give a million reasons to go for cheaper options, I get it. The sooner you go for the hardware modules, the sooner you’ll kill the lust and decide what to sell, if anything. Honestly 500 series probably isn’t the issue, it’s probably tube vs SS.

Tubes vs SS is like a B52 vs a commuter jet. But you often can’t land a b52 where you want to.

I appreciate your opinion on the matter.  The Avedis MA5 is not my favourite preamp, especially when paired up with the U67.  This is why I wasn't sure about adding an AMS Neve 1073 preamp to my studio.  However, after speaking with an engineer friend of mine from down in LA, I decided to reconsider.  He has a lot of experience with the AMS Neve 1073 units and said that he will use the DPX 1073 even more than his vintage modules because they sound so good at a lower price point.  He said that part of the reason that I am likely not excited about the sound of the MA5 is because it's in 500 series format, uses Jensen transformers instead of Marinair and doesn't have the EQ section.  He is confident that I will really like the AMS Neve 1073, so that's it's been my top contender for a solid state preamp.  

I considered the Millenia, and GML a few months back, but ended up going with the Tree Audio Branch, which I find to be very transparent and sweet in the high end. As a result, I think I'm looking for something with more colour and mojo when it comes to this solid state preamp. 

Thanks for the suggestion! I've never heard of that preamp before.  I do have a Miktek CV4 that I had modded by Shannon Rhoades about 10 years ago, but that's my only experience with the brand. 

I have an unmodded one. It's hard to find the sweet spot with just 2-3dB shaving for peaks because the metering is pretty imprecise, but it is indeed easy to go overboard.

Fav pre's are Sound Techniques ZR 7064 and Coil CA70.

I do want a BAE 1084 pair at some point, but that'd probably go to mixing duties.

For vocal tracking the Lisson Grove compressor is fantastic. I love that thing and currently track Vox and ACS gtr through it.

I am strongly considering buying the DPX with the 30 day window. I say the DPX because the SPX is not going to be in stock until mid-November or later. It wasn’t my original plan to go with the stereo version, but it may come in useful for my synths and as a hardware insert during mixing.

I really wanted a Coil Audio CA70 a few months back, but was steered away from it by my rep at Vintage King.  He said that the Coil would be too dark and coloured for my U67 Reissue and suggested the Tree Audio Branch instead.  

Coil gets a lot of love on these forums, so I wonder what type of music people are using them for.  Any tracks I've heard with it have a very 70's sound to them, which is not really what I'm doing.  I'm much more in the late 80's and early 90's direction. 

Just to clarify, do you mean to drive the input harder on the 1073 SPX/DPX before engaging the onboard EQ?  I was confused by your statement about this being a common problem with them. 

you should try the compressors with two detectors you can control then like kotelnikov, mdwdrc (buggy!), dynone, Oxford dynamics or ones that let you control the program dependency like the Weiss ds1 (blend the releases, chose the right lookahead/hold but not too long, and the right amount of rms smoothing, and use the improved limiter on the softube one to control overshoot! Raise the gain and lower the gain into it), stc-8 (peak stop), presswerk (adapt), molot ge (secondary attack and release and the limiter), and unisum (the entire lower panel is a mind fuck)

The automatic attack and release are necessary for natural action. See this video on Elysia auto fast attack as an example. The stc-8 has a similar peak override functionality, kotelnikov has an auto release for short transients, and Oxford dynamics an entirely separate limiter process that can be selected in lieu of the compressor

this stuff isn’t the best of the best and ultimate gets in the way of the music being performed because it is distorted with very small sweet spots.

1073 is an early solid state pre that’s almost copied from tube designs but with an absolutely wtf transformer loading and termination that the cleaned up versions seem to fix. It’s a design flaw and easily dirtier in the real world than cleaner tube amps and other early solid state amps that don’t have the 1073’s weirdo transformer issues.

1176 is boxy or gritty and only great for a small amount of gain reduction than the slow meter doesn’t reflect unless you want a drastically over compressed sound. If it were perfect, cleaner fet compressors and then vcas wouldn’t have come out. The amplifier and not great auto release is a huge culprit to the sound and it used a very mic pre type circuit that cannot be pushed with an attenuator. For all the really clever and useful design choices that went into many classic pieces of equipment, they often seem to have just taken basic circuits from prior designs if they worked.

La2a pretty much just cobbled together and pretty clever. Response depends entirely on the optical detector which is very slow, sometimes slower than your entire song in releasing, and then speeds up with greater gain reduction, sometimes way too fast to emulsify the audio past a certain point on your unit. Then there’s the tube stage the overcompressed audio (the metering does not really reflect the speed up at all) is often pushed hard into. Again if it were perfect, faster and more consistent optical compressors, vcas, and then cleaned up vcas in the late 90s and 2000s wouldn’t have come out with multiple sweet spots or program dependencies that you often don’t have to automate your way out of.

Again we are not talking Aphex, Crane Song, GML, Grace, Maselec, and Millenia here. We’re not even talking about well-built similar products as the overhyped internet gear but with the major design flaws corrected.