The mic preamp built into the card is extremly low quality and noisy as you've found out. A stand alone mic preamp will give substantially better performance. This would be patched to your soundcards line input, not the mic input. A console could be used in the exact same way. Also, when you patch in a pre to your sound cards line input, be sure you turn off all other inputs to the Windows mixer (Cd in, mic in, etc) as this will make it that much quieter still.