hardware question about amplification

S

swollenrod

New member
Ok so I bought a firewire 410 from a friend which has two mic pre's. After messing with it, I am realizing that the mic pre itself is not giving me a decent sound.

Giving it some thought, the word PRE probably means that I should be running the outputs to some sort of additional amp and then looping it back in to the 410 before the signal goes to the computer for recording.

Am I correct on this and what kind of amp would I need? I have seen mixing boards which have power...

Is this what I have been overlooking for the last month?
 
Nope, the preamp is all you need. In general you don't really want anything else in your signal chain.

What mic are you using with it? The preamps in the interface won't be the best, but they certainly more than usable and won't be that bad either. If you can't get a 'decent' sound out of your setup then there may be something else affecting it.
 
What he said ^^^

If you can't get a decent sound, the problem is most likely to arise before the signal hits the pre, and not after.
What are you trying to record, how are you trying to record it and what mike are you using?
 
Sorry "decent" is sort of subjective and in the HR world very non-specific. Let me be a little more clear.

My problem isnt so much with the sound/tone itself but the signal strength or amplification of the line as I am recording.

I am recording acoustic guitar using a sm57 and a second shure condenser mic to record in stereo. Both are angled at the fretboard just at where the body meets.

When I record, the vumeters are peaking at between -24db and -12db (in the yellow) I am no expert but I would think this would be very loud.


On the condenser mic track, the signal seems sort of ok - the recorded wave files seem a bit light for the db range but the wave form itself is dynamic but present - I assume that is somewhat normal being an acoustic guitar.

the sm57 track on the other hand, even cranked all the way on high (knob on the 410) is barely registering in its respective wave form. The higher I crank the knobs on the 410 the more I pick up ambient noise which is obviously unwanted.

i am trying to keep these even so I dont have to normalize the hell out of the both of them during mixdown.

I know dynamic and condenser mics record very differently but it seems like I wouldnt have to crank the knob all the way up to get a little sound.

Any suggestions? Thanks.
 
Bristol Posse said:
I'm guessing this is going to turn into one of those "Why is my recording not as loud as a commercial CD" threads
Click to expand...

No, I realize that post production does most the boosting and sound leveling. I just dont know why my mics are recording so low given how high the interface is cranked.

I figured either I have been missing some hardware or that something was wrong with the equipment.
 
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