How will a 3.5 Series Preamplifier help me make better recordings?

Firstly whatever equipment you have, professional or amateur, £200 or £2000, the best help is skill and experience, learning how to place and direct your microphone, and choosing a good location can have much more effect on your recording than one of our preamplifiers ever will.

That said, modern home recorders, Minidisc, DAT, cassette and video recorders are often capable of excellent audio recording quality. Unfortunately many are let down by poor microphone preamplifiers. Some preamplifiers will add electronic noise or hiss to a recording. Some are just not sensitive enough to record quiet sounds, such as wildlife, soft speech, ambience or sound effects.

The 3.5 Series preamps from FEL can help to improve recordings in two ways:

• The microphone signal is amplified at source enabling a higher recording level onto tape or disk.
• The amplification is very low noise so contributes much less noise to a recording than most built in microphone amps. With this extra level effectively from the microphone it is possible to record with less gain, and therefore less hiss from the internal amplifier.

It is just like having a louder (or more sensitive) microphone!

The 3.5 series work from plug in power (a power source present on almost every domestic MiniDisc, DAT and camcorder) so there are no batteries to run down or change or forget to switch off (or on!). There are no switches or controls; you just connect the preamp between the microphone and recorder and go! The 3.5 series preamps work with all dynamic and battery powered microphones but will not work with the few microphones that themselves use plug in power. If in doubt please e-mail us to check compatibility.

HEAR what the 3.5 Series actually do on this Quicktime Movie this is Rob Danielson's report to the NatureRecordist list

You will need Quicktime to view the video available here

3.5 Series | What is Plug in Power?