should i buy a mixer or an external preamp?

S

Schecterplayer

New member
i have my studio set up nicely with a nice desktop com an interface and mics. i have a tascam us 200 and that replaced a audiobox usb. that thing made its own noise and it became so unusable. the interface i have now is alsmost dead silent but the pres arent great. im wanting to get a ixer to have inputs for just all the sound stuff but also to have better pres. im looking at a behringer mixer or something similar. would that be an ok option or sould i get say a presonus tube pre?
 
If your interface is fine, just upgrade your preamps. If you can just upgrade them. Otherwise, you may as well upgrade the whol lot.
 
Schecterplayer said:
ok thanks. what exactly do pro studios do? how do they do pres?
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My guess would be they do something stupidly over-expensive and complicated that would be meaningless for your budget.
Just get an interface with good preamps built in and perhaps a control surface if you don't like to use the mixer in your DAW.
 
I have a good interface but the pres are noisy so i just want to know if mixer pres or a dedicated pre like a tube pre would be better. I have a control surface
 
somegeezer said:
My guess would be they do something stupidly over-expensive and complicated that would be meaningless for your budget.
Just get an interface with good preamps built in and perhaps a control surface if you don't like to use the mixer in your DAW.
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I am going to agree with this completely. The US200 preamps are definitely clean, but they are not at the level that a 'pro' studio would use. That being said, they are very usable for general recording, and will get good results. Connection of an external preamp would be done via the line inputs. There are a few preamps worthy of giving character to a mic'd signal under $600. Anything below that, IME, is usually not much better than the built in ones you already have. With that being said, I use a few ART preamps to run the line in's of my US1641 for scratch tracks and such.

Adding an inexpensive Behri mixer to use it's preamps, would be a backward step in improving your input signal. If you are really wanting to get a preamp that works, save $1500 and get something that you will use for the rest of your life. Spend $200, and plan to throw away half of that when you sell it. If you are serious about tone, you will realize soon that you will not use it for anything important.

Unless you spend a great deal of money, you are not going to get much improvement over the Tascam built in pre's.
 
My us 200 is so clean till i connect a mic. Then te noise. Even in a dead silent room. I got the mic with a package deal with an audiobox. Could that be making the noise? Cuz thats what im tryin to avoid. It seems no matter where i turn everythimg has hissing in it. Unless i pay millions of bucks it seems like its impossible to get away from alot of hiss
 
Some presonus name brand. Even with my schools digi 001 interface and a very nice mic i still got hissing that was very noticible.
 
Sounds like your most prominent issue is with the mic. My best advice would be to look at your signal chain from the start, before throwing more gear at the problem. If the mic is noisy through other preamps/interfaces, well........ Start with a different mic. As far as I know, the Tascam US line uses the same preamps. I have no issues with them as far as being noisy. In fact, they are surprisingly clean for the price. When getting into using a pre to get the most out of a mic, they are generic. Throw money at that for sure. Noise is not a result of the Tascam pre's IME.
 
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