ad/da and pre-amp

[hermanmern]

Hello,

I just wanna ask do we really need outboard ad converter and preamp if we already have it on our audio interface?

some people say that we do need a better converter and pre if you want a better sound quality. coz the one inside the interface is not good enough.

I just dont understand what will happen to the sound if I have both external and internal coverter and pre-amp? does the sound get "pre-amp" twice? do we need to bypass it? or I dont need to worry, the chip/technical/computer thing inside will figure it out itself, just plug and play??

I was thinking to upgrade my audio interface n buy RME fireface product line and need some info and help.

Thanks!

 

[Massive Master]

RME is on another level from most of the typical "budget friendly" stuff out there. The preamps aren't anything special, but they're actually reasonably good preamps. The converters are quite good as well.

That said - Of course, you still might want to use different preamps... There are far too many wonderful preamps out there not to take advantage of some variables. You simply run the line out of any other preamp into the line in (not the mic in) of your interface.

Good call on the RME though -

 

[wheelema]

As Massive alluded to (and if I'm blowing smoke out my ass feel free to correct me) but there are three possible analog line levels (electrical inputs/outputs)... Mic level (-40db) which, as you might suspect, is the signal that a microphone outputs... Consumer level (-10db) which is what a consumer device like a CD player outputs... and Line level (+4db) which is what a mic preamp (for example) outputs.

Now personally I've never been rich enough to try it but I suspect that it would be a bad thing to output a +4db signal into an input that's expecting a -40db output. This is why daisy-chaining mic preamps probably isn't the best idea. If you choose to do it please let us know what happens.