Is the Quality of the prepreamp that dictates the quality of the whole system?

Great voice coil and ribbon microphones exist. How about prepreamps?


Classic condenser microphones almost get away with it as they usually have a superb quality internal prepreamplifier.


Is the quality of the prepreampifier, the quality of the rest of the system?


To listener's brain.


Songs that get air played are few. And most of them if not all have top quality vocals.


There are many U47, M88, 77DX etc.


But few hit songs.


Apart from the song and singer's ability could it be that the secret was in the pre preamp?


It is perhaps the only equipment that can be relatively easily handmade and of top quality.


The open source Pleiades V6 pre preamplifier is such an attempt. It is based on U47 but the hassle of the power supply is eliminated by a few Mohm resistor from anode to grid making operation of the electron tube possible with just a battery. The transformers are relatively easily wound on Magnetec 070 Nanoperm magnetic ring cores.


A great prepreamp may not be a commercial equipment. If it were perhaps thousands thousands of producers would produce top vocal sound.


But only a few do on the whole planet.


What is it that makes the vocal so good on Eternal Flame - Bangles ? Apart from the top intune singing and varispeed (a help for intune singing should be low acoustic monitoring level of the song on the singer's ears, as pitch perception depends on acoustic intensity, S.S. Stevens).


References:


Sound and Hearing - S.S. Stevens


Neumann U47 schematic


Pleiades V6 schematic


For varispeed see Michael Tretow interviews on how he recorded ABBA, or Mike Oldfield on his visit to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop etc.