Microphone, Preamp And Converter If Money Were Not A Factor?

One of my readers sent me an e-mail that asked the following:

Ken,
Out of sheer curiosity, if you were shopping for a voiceover microphone and preamp and money weren’t a factor, what would you pick?
Same question with a 2,000 budget.
Thank you, and have a fantastic night!

It was really a fun exercise, kinda like when someone asks you what you would do if you won the lottery.

I looked into a lot of high-end audio gear for this. Since this particular person was interested in a voice-over set-up, it helped me focus my research. I wouldn’t need the capability to record multiple microphone inputs at once like I would for music recording, where I’d want enough microphone inputs and simultaneous recording capability to handle at least 8, but more likely 16 sources.

Also, my choices would have to work with Windows, since I don’t own a Mac. Anyway, below is the result of my trip to fantasy land of unlimited budgets:

Sorry for the delay. If money were no factor I would probably not have a single “interface” unit, but a 3-part preamp, A/D converter, and I/O interface. I think an excellent set-up would be a Neumann U87 mic (~$3,600) going through a Grace Design m101 Preamp (~$700) going through a Forssell MADC-2 ($2,950) going into a Digigram LoLa881 PCIe Multi-Channel Digital Audio Card ($969). So I guess that would come to about $8,219. Fun exercise;).

For a budget of $2,000 I’d do a Sennheiser MKH 416 shotgun mic (~$1,000) into an MOTU  UltraLIte-mk3 Hybrid FireWire/USB Audio & MIDI Interface (~$539) for a total of $1,539. I couldn’t find any other combo that fit under $2,000. The next closest exceeds it by $549, and that combo would be the MKH 416 into an RME Fireface UCX – USB and FireWire Audio Interface ($1,549).

This was a really fun exercise. Now I know better what kinds of high-end audio gear is available if I’m ever so rich that money becomes “no object.” For those of your who are already there, well here is a good list to get you going;).