I have had the Art Tube MP Project Series preamp for about 4 months now. I have been messing with the settings, and reading the manual, as well as postings on forums.
My microphone is the MXL CR-24 Large Condenser Mic. I have a metal pop filter. I am plugging my mic into the Art box with a XLR cable, then running a 1/4 jack cable into my Tascam US-600 interface.
I have read that you should avoid using the +20db gain button. Thats not really possible for me. I have my Impedance set on high, which is the default. I turn the Filter On. My Phantom +48v is on. My limit is Off, and my Phase is Norm.
With the +20db off, I have to turn the Gain up to at least 36 in order to get the -15 light to come on, sometimes. I am not a loud vocalist, but I am about 3 inches from the mic, singing directly into it (through the pop filter). Also, I have to turn up my input gain on my Tascam US-600 in order to get my DAW to even pick up the sound. My green signal indicator on my Tascam requires me to set the Art Output to at least 4, and my gain on the Tascam channel to about 11 o'clock.
The best setting I have discovered so far is turning on the +20db gain on the Art box, then turning the gain nob to about 24. Thats what my mic needs for a decent level of input, so the green -15 gain light stays on most of the time. Then, I put my output to-1, and turn the Tascam input gain to 9 o'clock, which is barely on. I get pretty warm vocals with this, no clipping whatsoever, and enough volume in my DAW where I can actually hear the recording.
Does this sound about right, or am I still missing something?
I would like to enable my -10db pad on my mic, but there is no way that I will light up the -15 light that way. I would have to push the gain to about 70db to make that even work, which would be really driving the tube.
I think I have to learn my DAW better (I am using Cakewalk Sonar X2 Pro), especially using the EQ and volume settings. Pretty clueless on the processing aspect of the project. All I do is bounce everything to a stereo track, then export it to mp3.
My microphone is the MXL CR-24 Large Condenser Mic. I have a metal pop filter. I am plugging my mic into the Art box with a XLR cable, then running a 1/4 jack cable into my Tascam US-600 interface.
I have read that you should avoid using the +20db gain button. Thats not really possible for me. I have my Impedance set on high, which is the default. I turn the Filter On. My Phantom +48v is on. My limit is Off, and my Phase is Norm.
With the +20db off, I have to turn the Gain up to at least 36 in order to get the -15 light to come on, sometimes. I am not a loud vocalist, but I am about 3 inches from the mic, singing directly into it (through the pop filter). Also, I have to turn up my input gain on my Tascam US-600 in order to get my DAW to even pick up the sound. My green signal indicator on my Tascam requires me to set the Art Output to at least 4, and my gain on the Tascam channel to about 11 o'clock.
The best setting I have discovered so far is turning on the +20db gain on the Art box, then turning the gain nob to about 24. Thats what my mic needs for a decent level of input, so the green -15 gain light stays on most of the time. Then, I put my output to-1, and turn the Tascam input gain to 9 o'clock, which is barely on. I get pretty warm vocals with this, no clipping whatsoever, and enough volume in my DAW where I can actually hear the recording.
Does this sound about right, or am I still missing something?
I would like to enable my -10db pad on my mic, but there is no way that I will light up the -15 light that way. I would have to push the gain to about 70db to make that even work, which would be really driving the tube.
I think I have to learn my DAW better (I am using Cakewalk Sonar X2 Pro), especially using the EQ and volume settings. Pretty clueless on the processing aspect of the project. All I do is bounce everything to a stereo track, then export it to mp3.
