The MixPre3/6 are shipping now and immediately people are testing them against their other pieces of gear. The most obvious piece of gear a lot of people want to see it compared to is the Zoom F-series. And while it is an unfair fight when comparing features given that the Zoom F4/F8 offer more for the money we can atleast see how do they sound against eachother.
Matt at Sound Rolling suggest buying the Zoom F4 over the MixPre6 when comparing features on paper.
So here is a sound comparisons done by some professionals.
Click play on the following video and close your eyes when listening. I would have preferred a blind A/B test but no one seems to have posted a video giving you a blind sample.
The above videomaker used a Sanken CS3-e, a solid sounding mic. There is a tonality difference, very minor. Personally I don’t hate eithers sound. And in a vacuum on to themselves both sound realistic and clear. You’d never record audio on both in a scene for a movie and cut between the 2 wav files so having them sound identical isn’t needed. Liking one over the other is going to play into your personal preferences. Comment what you hear below.
But tonality is only half of what matters, the noise floor of the pres is equally important. Some microphones require more gain and if that preamp is noisy then it just won’t cut mustard.
Again, you can hear a very slight tonal difference in the pink noise but the noise floor levels are almost identical. I’m not sure what makes the MixPres preamp a Kashmir Preamp other then that it’s a marketing term. We know they aren’t the same preamps in the 633. But when it comes to saying one sounds better than the other… that’s subjective at best.
About the Author
Andrew Jones is a location sound mixer based in Los Angeles. He started in the TV and Film industry in 2004. You can email him at Andrew@HoldForSound.com
Wav.Report 