Don Pearce wrote:

One more thing - the Neve mic pre has a pretty poor noise performance.
At -128dBu equivalent at the input, that is about 6dB above pure
thermal noise. That is 4 or 5 dB more noise than they should be
achieving.


Even if that were correct it is immaterial in most situations where the gain
is not set to maximum (and that is the ONLY place a mic amp achieves an
equivalent input figure this good). As gain is reduced, output noise begins
to dominate and the old Neve mixers still beat most 'modern' designs in
that respect.

Put simply, equivalent input noise is only part of the story.

ian