Loads of good questions boydie!
I'll try to answer them:
- Adding AD/DA. This is a a question I am pondering and pondering. Yes, it is an extra technical challenge, but all that does it add a little more work to do. The main problems we would have are
- Will it all fit in our intended enclosure (making the enclosure bigger would increase price
)
- Can it be done for our intended price point
I need to work that out. It might be that we would have to lose 2 of the preamps to accomodate. Or just increase the price point a little. One thing I can appreciate for the home recordist is that it makes the workflow more complex to not have an 'all in one' box, and potentially more pricey.
Another option to look at is having 2 preamps plus audio interface with the possibility to extend the number of mic inputs with 'satellite' units.
It wouldn't lose the advantage of good preamps to plugin into the line inputs of a separate audio interface. (Unless the line inputs and/or A/D conversion of the audio interface was particularly crappy, but you would still see the difference between using these mic preamps as opposed to the builtin preamps of the audio interface).
Tube/Valve option.
Bottom line here is it will increase the price significantly since tubes are 'expensive' (probably about £8-10 per tube) but mainly because they need different supply voltages so its a whole technical challenge.
A less technically difficult option, which could be done easily as an 'upgrade' option would be to offer transformer balanced outputs on the preamps. This would be very easy to do from a technical point of view and add all the pleasing aural benefits of transformers. It would still add about £50 per channel for a good transformer however, but we can do the basic unit in such a way that you could pop out the existing line driver and pop in a transformer if yourself, or offer a 'modern' and 'vintage' option.
I can talk about what the actual preamp will entail if it is of interest.
The mic preamp will be built around the THATCorp 1580 chip. This offers *incredibly* low noise (-134.8dbU at 40db of gain) and THD (0.0005%). To put this into context, the UAD Apollo Quad interface uses TI PGA2500 chips for its preamps which have -128dbU of noise at 30db of gain. Bottom line is we are confident of getting high end preamp specifications in what we think can be a mid to low end price.
I think one of the closest competitors could be the SPL Crimson, which is a very good unit. Here is a review:
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/spl-crimsonThe main differences with what we are doing:
- We are aiming at slightly better preamp performance
- We will be offering 4 mic inputs, SPL offers 2 mic inputs and 2 instrument inputs. I think adding 1 or 2 instrument inputs to ours could be a quick win.
- SPL has the A/D conversion
- We will have the remote control via your phone, ipad or DAW. While SPL has the 'tactile' or gratifying advantage of knobs & buttons, I think the advantages of remote control far outweigh the extra cost of working in all those analogue control. For example, a phone app could offer much better metering for each channel or the ability to save settings etc.
- SPL has another speaker output so you can switch between your A and B speakers. This is something we have considered but are unsure of - is it useful to the home recordist? (It is potentially useful to me for example)
- SPL has a couple of extra small features such as a 'dim' button on the monitor, high pass filters on the preamps
And of course, the main thing we are competing with versus SPL and any other audio company is the fact that we dont have the 'might' of an established company to fund mass production and so on. We are doing it piecemeal, bit by bit
In which case features such as output transformers might just give us that edge?
