Sperate Preamps into an Allen and Heath

[KingstonRock]

Hi, I own an Allen an Heath which has beautiful preamps, but in the never ending search for "that sound," im looking to upgrade to dedicated seperate preamps. My question is, when recording drums through these new preamps, would i run them into my mixer then soundcard, or straight into the soundcard. Obviously cutting out the mixer would yeild a shorter signal path but when recording drums especially its good to have the faders on the mixer to control levels before the soundcard and the mixer's main outs for monitoring the incoming signal.

p.s. the mixer can handle balanced and unblanced 1/4 and xlr inputs

much thanks from a newbie

[drstawl]

I've tried it both ways using a Mix Wiz 16:2 and a dbx386.
If I use the dbx the signal is sent direct to the soundcard digitally
(GINA via S/PDIF) while for convenience, the analog out is usually plugged into a pair of inputs on the A&H. If I had no digital I/O I'd run the dbx analog out straight into the soundcard. Or use the pres on the A&H and either the mains or direct outs to the soundcard. When I've tried them in series the signal quality went down. Not horribly but noticeably.

>but when recording drums especially its good to have the faders on the mixer to control levels before the soundcard and the mixer's main outs for monitoring the incoming signal.

You're not gonna be fast enough to hear a spike and cut the fader. Such spastic attempts at fader movements will ruin the tracking. Leave enough headroom and you'll be fine!

Your recorder should have decent meters anyway.

[KingstonRock]

In reference to the faders, i wasnt implying that I would use them as a manual compressor , just for an overall equaliztion before the soundcard. But if signal quality is degraded, i will have to skip the allen and heath, and try to explain why i spent $1000 on its beautiful preamps!! as always i will have to experiment, but if worst comes to worst, the mixer will work nicely as a single channel headphone amp!

- thanks

[drstawl]

Awwww c'mon!!! Headphone amp? Those are sweet pres. You just can't place even two sweet pre sections in series and expect them to sound better than either one by itself! If you're gonna use the EQ on the A&H use the pres as well.....

[crawdad]

If you are gonna buy discreet pre's don't run them through anything else. Straight to the soundcard. You want the purest signal path you can get. If you run a n Avalon into your mixer, it sort of defeats the purpose. I'm not judging the Allen and Heath pre's, but the type of mixer doesn't really matter. You don't buy a Neve and then run it through a Mackie before you hit your soundcard. That would be a waste of money. Simple as that.

[KingstonRock]

Well thank you to everyone, the input is much apprieciated, now the question becomes what pres, if any, to upgrade to. I wont put the burden of answering that question on anyone!