Help with outboard gear

[Chris Jahn]

At the moment im completely digital, but in the near future i want some outboard gear (mostly pre-amps and compressors, im fairly happy with my reverb plug ins) but i honestly dont no how it works when your using digital stuff, ie:no anolog mixing board.

I use Firepods for my interface, but knowledge of any multi-input interface would sufice. basically, how do i put it into my signal chain?, will i need a patch bay, and how does that work in this senerio? And can i "send" signals from the computer back through this processing, or does it need to go through it while recording live, meaning, if i only have two pre amps and two compressors, but i want them on all 8 of my drum tracks (or whatever) am i shit out of luck and stuck with only the four, or can some go through in post.

lastly, if i get outboard pre's, but my interface already has pre's, am i causeing problems by sending a signal through one into the other, or is this ok?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I use Firepods for my interface, but knowledge of any multi-input interface would sufice. basically, how do i put it into my signal chain?, will i need a patch bay, and how does that work in this senerio? And can i "send" signals from the computer back through this processing, or does it need to go through it while recording live, meaning, if i only have two pre amps and two compressors, but i want them on all 8 of my drum tracks (or whatever) am i shit out of luck and stuck with only the four, or can some go through in post.

Hey Chirs,

One of the possible reasons that you don't get the number of responses you'd like to see is because it's difficult to answer some posts that ask five questions per paragraph and require an answer that would be long even for a pedantist like me . There's a WHOLE LOT of explaining that needs to be done to answer the above paragraph with any kind of quality.

The short answers is that you'd need not only converters to go from analog to digital (ADCs), but also from digital to analog (DACs). How many DACs you need has a variable answer, but two should suffice for a minimum. Yes, you'd be best off using a patch bay as your central signal router so that you can assign outboard boxes to your channels as needed from task to task. If you only have two channels of compression tat you want to use on 8 tracks of drums, you can do them two tracks at a time if need be, or just apply the compression to a stereo submix of your drums, depending upon your tracks' needs.

lastly, if i get outboard pre's, but my interface already has pre's, am i causeing problems by sending a signal through one into the other, or is this ok?

Yes, that is problematic. You do not want to run preamps in series. The output from a preamp is line level, and does not want or need further preamplification. What you'd need to do in an instance like that is make sure that you are running the external pre into jacks that'll accept line level input without using the mic pre.

G.