tracking without preamp??

[logan]

say if you want to record a vocal without a preamp would you loose any quality in your vocals if you patched them into the preamp and back into the computer after you record?

[Track Rat]

No preamp, no vocal. Microphones need a preamp to get their signal up to line level to input to any recording device.

[HogansHiro]

Are you talking about NOT using an outboard pre-amp and just using your board pres?

[acorec]

Originally Posted by logan

say if you want to record a vocal without a preamp would you loose any quality in your vocals if you patched them into the preamp and back into the computer after you record?

Are you talking about not using a pre-amp when recording and patching a pre-amp in, like say back to a computer, after you record? Or did you mean something else that makes sense?

[corban]

so to summarize, you need a preamp, the preamps in your board will work, but putting them back through a preamp after you record is worse than useless

[northsiderap]

Even if your dynamic mic put out a very healthy signal of 3mv, it would still be sitting at -50dBv to -70dbV at best for useable passages. Say your recorder's noise level is -100dBv. That leaves you 30-50dBv from the bottom of your signal to the noise floor.

Now, run this back through a mic preamp and you only have a noise floor reduced to -30dbV to -50dbV. Most good mic preamps are spec'd far better than -100dbV for a noise floor. You just took your noise floor up from -100db to -30db.

Ouch

[Alexbt]

Sounds like they mean putting a XLR to 1/4 (and adapted from there) into their computer and cranking up the gain afterwards...

[HogansHiro]

It'd be a hell of a lot easier to figure out if he checked his damn thread.

[northsiderap]

If it's a Soundblaster or some standard computer card, it has a mic in already. That means there's a functional mic preamp in the card. Why would you need two mic preamps? Sounds bad with 2.

Standard computer sound cards are not bad... I'm sure there's someone competent out there designing them. You can get good stuff with a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter and a microphone.

[fraserhutch]

Originally Posted by northsiderap

If it's a Soundblaster or some standard computer card, it has a mic in already. That means there's a functional mic preamp in the card. Why would you need two mic preamps? Sounds bad with 2.

Standard computer sound cards are not bad... I'm sure there's someone competent out there designing them. You can get good stuff with a 1/4" to 1/8" adapter and a microphone.

Define "good", please.

Sure, they may be someone competent designing them, but generally they are designed for supporting gaming and recording Aunt Lizzie's Christmas message. They are not generally designed for decent audio recording.

My $0.02.

[Blue Bear Sound]

Originally Posted by northsiderap

Standard computer sound cards are not bad...

They are not designed at all for pro audio recording purposes and nowhere near "good enough".... as someone pointed out, they're usable for games and the family Christmas message, but not much else...........

[logan]

hey sry what i meant was i have preamps on my board and on my presonus firepod and i have and presonus m80. but what i was asking is if i had a vocalist taht came in and sung a song directly from the mic into my board using its pres and then into me presonus and record. later could i go back and run what i allready recorded through a friends focusrite preamp and then re record it back into my computer would i still be able to get the tone and sound quality of that focusrite or not?

[mixsit]

Originally Posted by logan

... directly from the mic into my board using its pres and then into me presonus and record.

That's already two preamps in a row?
edit; Oops I missed the 'Firepod so scratch that..

... later could i go back and run what i allready recorded through a friends focusrite preamp and then re record it back into my computer would i still be able to get the tone and sound quality of that focusrite or not?

For the focusrite preamp or for some other process?
From your first post it would seem that you were looking for a way to record without a pre so as to not lose whatever initial quality there was.(?) Then the generally true short answer would be definitely not. a) When in doubt, the shortest path is a good place to shoot for. b) Wouldn't whatever small gain a better pre offers be whipped out by 'inferior pre, not to mention another trip through converters?
Wayne
Just for the record, you can run mics w/o a pre (in the right conditions) but how 'bout we get the big things worked out first.

[Enzo Polotso]

you've got a firepod (so do i), forget your board, the firepods got 8 very usable pres built in, probably better than your boards (unless you've got a really good one), just go mic>XLR cable>firepod>computer. if you really wanna use the pres in your board, you'd go into the channel 1 and 2 INs on the BACK of the firepod, make sure you dont go from those pres to the front firepod XLRs.

game set match

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Logan,

No.

A preamp is to be used only once. To boost the voltage from the microphone to bring it to "standard line level" voltage so that it looks to your mixer, recorder, etc. like any other line signal. Once you're at line voltage, that's it. No more preamps.

G.

[Theros]

This thread is confusing...

I thought what he was asking was if he could record MIC->Computer and save that track (yes its not at line level)

Then later run that track from PC->PRE->PC so he could basically run it through a diffrent PRE laters (His friends), using the recorded non line level track...

Don't think thats possible anyhows... signal would be to weak to record?

Could possibly have mis-interpretted his meaning anyhows...

Theros