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A new mic preamp just arrived — an old Event EMP-1 that I bought on eBay for $71.

The reason I got this is kinda long-winded story.  My Firewire audio interface, Alesis IO14, bit the dust (which may not be its own fault — more on this later) so I bought Echo AudioFire4 to replace it.  But to my disappointment the brand new unit that arrived, couldn’t turn on the phantom power.  And to my further disappointment, I tested the same unit with a different computer and the phantom power did come on — so the problem, it appears, is my MacBook’s Firewire connection.  I thought it odd that my Alesis just up and died, when it just sat in my studio (it may or may not be broken — so far my tests are inconclusive).

So, I faced the dilemma: AudioFire seemed to be working flawlessly except that it couldn’t provide phantom power to my condenser mic.  Do I return it and pick a different unit after I went through all the research and picked out one that seem to meet my needs and have a solid reputation, or do I replace my computer, or… do I simply find a phantom power source?  I chose the last option (I had just replaced the hard drive on my MacBook, so I wasn’t quite ready to go through another trauma of migrating all my data to another computer), but as I looked for a phantom power device, I thought, why not just get a used preamp, instead of just a phantom power source?

I was looking at M-Audio DMP-3, which has a very good reputation among home recordists for being clean and good bang for buck.  I also looked at Symetrix 202 and Aphex 107 as well.  Then this EMP-1 caught my eye.  Apparently it’s an old unit that’s long been discontinued and I only found one review on it.  But the review was good and also Event’s reputation as a manufacturer of fine studio monitors (I use the also long-discontinued Tria System as my main monitors) felt good to me, so I decided to bid what I thought was a justifiable amount for taking the risk of buying an old, little-known preamp.

So far all I did was plug it in and confirmed that everything was working, so more on what it can do later.

Well, yesterday I received my new audio interface, Echo AudioFire4, and today I plugged it in…. and it sure works.  The installation process was a no-brainer, giving me confidence about the supposed good reputation this company has on their drivers.

The playback seems a bit brighter than what I’m used to with the long-defunct Alesis IO14.  But it’s just a hair, though — nothing I can’t get used to.

So I opened up a recording of one of my songs I last worked on in Logic Express — only to discover that the drum samples are missing.  It somehow didn’t survive the hard drive crash I had a couple of days ago — I think I know why, though it’s really not useful to explain here.

I have the samples backed up elsewhere, but it’s among the stacks of backup CDRs I have — it was from the days before I had hard drives to back things up to.  This was an unexpected extra step in my current project to get me back into recording after a 6-month hiatus.

Some of the plugins didn’t work, either — I need to investigate that.

Then I was jamming to some King’s X later.  And I was struck once again between how clumsy I am on my guitar.  I’ve been practicing diligently and I feel that I am in a good shape, chop-wise — but my good shape is still nowhere near I want to be.

So today felt like it was one step forward, two steps backward.  I long to be in a place where I can creatively express myself effortlessly — my equipment is all set up and seamlessly working, and I have a command on my instrument that I can pull out what I hear in my head.

But in the mean time, I just have to say what I can say with what I got.  That’s creative and still fun, too.  I just need to get over these initial mini-frustrations.

Onward!