FMR Audio RNP 8380 Reviews

Good clean gain at an affordable price

Good small preamp that I generally use as to record guitars and basses directly on the interface (it has both microphone and Hi-Z inputs). It has inserts so it can be paired easily with his brother the RNC (really nice compressor). The 66 dB stepped gain (+6dB steps) is very useful when using stereo pairs of microphones to perfectly match the gain. Soundwise it's a very transparent. Every studio should have one. Even Steve Albini recommends it.

Superb quality

I have used the compressor from FMR for years and bought this to do some location recording. It’s simply the best for its price and size, works really well on ribbon mics that need lots of gain, silent and quality sounding

A very useful tool, for many types of instruments

I use mine for recording voice, violins and acoustic guitars by using condenser and ribbon mics, and for recording stereo electronics keyboard and electric bass (direct).

In my opinion it's a quite transparent preamp, and helps keeping the natural sound of whatever gets connected to it, without degrading dynamic and spectral aspects.

Eventually, 2 channels are too few: in the future i'll buy another one :)

NOTE: if future versions had even some basic eq filtering, like some high-pass switch or knob, it would be even better ...

small, but good

I recently decided it was time to upgrade from the built in preamps in my Focusrite Sapphire to a 'real' external preamp. My budget was about 600 EUR. Afer a LOT of online research, I narrowed my options down to 6 preamps, in roughly the same price range. The preamps were:

ART Pro MPA II

Warm Audio TB12 Tone Beast

Black Lion Audio B173 Preamp

FMR Audio RNP 8380

Warm Audio WA73

Focusrite ISA One Analog

As I will be using the preamp mostly for vocals and bass, I tested both those signals.

I plugged my Ibanez 600 in passive mode into my BSS DI, into the preamp. For vocals, I hooked up my SM7B straight into the preamp, into Logic X. The results:

The FMR Audio RNP8380 is a dual channel preamp in a super small case (especially compared to the others on this list). It sounded great on vocals, with a lot of smooth, round gain. On bass I felt it lacking, clipping more easily, and sounding dull. Also, it doesn't have a lot of options. But it plays very well with an SM7B.

Great transparent preamp

I really like this pre, it was a huge step up from stock pre I had at the time. It's nice and clean with a lot of headroom. It's hard to find fault for the price. My only recommendation would be to make a four channel that's got rack attachments already included.

FMR RNP 8380

As soon as i got an FMR RNP and wanted to test it out. The RNP can do pretty much anything pretty well. Being a guitarplayer, i think the RNP is a better choice for me. Sounded awesome and has a great build quality. I found the RNP 8380 to be an excellent all-purpose preamp, providing unhyped clarity without artificially glossing the high end. It is versatile on primary sources like vocals, guitar, keyboards, synths, piano, drums, bass, etc. It works well with all types of mics, it has phantom power for condensers. It has enough gain for ribbons and dynamics too.

After all and like the name says, it's a Really Nice Preamp.

Love The FMR RNP. It's the best pre I have and it's a huge improvement for me.

This two-channel microphone preamp is very good value for money, the sound is clean and neutral (though the preamp gets noisier with highest gain settings, but that much amplification is rarely needed). The features are basic, but sufficient (phase invert, phantom, DI input, FX insert). This is a great choice for a first external preamp. The sound quality is considerably better than in the preamps found in low and mid-level usb and firewire audio interfaces. In my unit the gain knobs are little wobbly, but this does not affect operation.

Beautiful transparent sound

I have owned this 2-channel pre-amp for just over a couple of months, and already have used it on vocals for several recordings. It is transparent, clean and sounds lovely both with a Shure SM7 & a Neumann TLM-103.

There are lots of similar products out there in terms of price and sound quality but I don't think I'll find another pre-amp with better sound and cost per channel.

Like the other FMR products, the 1/3 rack space is really useful for the smaller studio. If anything, clearer output metering would be useful but that is what I use my interface metering for.