Recording Pre-amps

Beecher

Im looking to upgrade my home recording setup and get a rack system which I can D.I into an m-box. I have most of it planned out but im a little lost in the world of pre-amps! Can I, for example, just d.i a marshall 9001 preamp (seem to be quite cheap second hand these days) in the computer or would I need a power amp like a 8008 to go with it? Im also wondering what other pre-amps would be reccomended for this kinda setup? Cheers, J.

musician.ie

What are you recording?
How many simultaneous tracks do you need to record?
What are you looking to spend?

Beecher

musician.ie wrote:

What are you recording?

Instrument wise guitars, bass, v-drums at the moment, vocals will be recorded later on but not important at the moment. Music style ranges from anything between radiohead to liquid tension experiment depending on my mood at the time.

musician.ie wrote:

How many simultaneous tracks do you need to record?

I only need one for myself really, but wouldnt mind having the option for more later. The m-box has 2 inputs, and since the v-drums dont require a pre-amp and im presuming im going to need seperate pre-amps for guitar and bass that should be more than enough for me.

musician.ie wrote:

What are you looking to spend?

At the moment im looking at spending a grand, but I do plan on getting a g-major with this money aswell and a few other things, so prob around 500-600 for preamps.

Cheers, J.

musician.ie

Depends on your recording chain, I guess. If you are recording guitar/bass from an amp, you'll want to mic it (dynamic mic), and that will call for a preamp - something like the focusrite trackmaster would probably be a good baseline. Look at that and then start checking out the more expensive ones. If you are recording from a guitar workstation/amp modeller, you can connect direct.

What you might want to think about is are the pre-amps in your m-box powerful enough to record a dynamic mic direct? They might be, and you may not need a preamp. I know I my ego-sys wamirack has built in mic preamps which, if I pump up the gain, will give me a hot enough signal from a direct connection.

assuming you decide you need a preamp:
. will one preamp do you - will you ever need stereo thru preamps?
. The m-box has sp/dif digital IO - if you can get a preamp with sp/dif out, you'll have a nice clean signal path
. what features do you need on the pre-amp - EQ? compression? expansion?
. metering will be important. some budget amps only include a clip LED

musician.ie

Also - the m-box purports to deliver 48V phantom power (required for condensor mics). Check out if it really can. Many soundcards say they deliver 48V, but they are really only delivering about 16-20V! If that's the case with your m-box, chances are most condensor mics won't work with it, and you'll need a pre-amp or a mixer that can deliver this. For a really cheap solution, to that problem, look at the behringer shark, which packs quite a punch for the price.
http://www.behringer.com/DSP110/index.cfm?lang=ENG
Here are some reviews
http://www.harmony-central.com/Effects/Data/Behringer/Shark_DSP110-01.html

Eoin Madsen

To be fair, most condensors are happy to work anywhere in 12v-52v, I wouldn't be overly concerned about the quality of phantom power unless you have a pretty tempermental mic. The phantom supplied by my behringer mixer is bang on 48v, so I wouldn't be too worried about the MBox myself.

Regarding special preamp features like compression/expansion etc, the general rule applies that if you don't know what it's for - you don't need it. Tbh, a dedicated preamp is likely to be higher quality than a box crammed full of features. An EQ is good - EQ done on the signal before digital encoding will have greater impact on the quality of sound than EQ added later, particularly if boosting high frequencies. Compression you can happily do digitally (on your computer) until you can afford to pick up a dedicated compressor.

You can DI a guitar preamp, but you probably won't find that it sounds that much like a recorded guitar. It might be useful if you intend to use digital modelling to emulate the sound of the poweramp and cab (there area a number of guitar amp modelling programs and plugins available at the moment), but you might want to consider micing otherwise. DI-ing a bass is easier and unless you're happy with your acoustic environment, your mics, and your bass amp, it may be preferable to micing. Just do it through a preamp (even the guitar preamp) rather than a straight DI.

To be quite honest, I don't think you'd notice a huge difference between the preamps in your MBox and anything you might get for 500-600 euro. Stick with the MBox for now and get some nice microphones would be my advice.