Is there a way to....?

[1000w]

First I do understand the importance of good equipment, but I'm a broke musician. Get it?
I do not have a mixer. Let's get that out of the way right now.
What I do have is this...
A great PC with CEP 1.2a
A Darla 24 soundcard
AKG 880 (cheap mic, I know, I know)
A Zoom 506 bass processor (cheap box, I know, I know)
I use the Zoom as my pre amp because it is all that I have. And as you may or may not know, the Zoom has no output control except in the edit settings and this I have set accordingly for clarity.
Well, my waves are barely even visible. Other than being barely heard, they sound fine, but are very "thin" looking. I "Amplify" and use my filters and EQ's for "hiss removal", but the concluded "effect" ends up ...well, just wrong.
What I am wondering is since I have no control over my input volume of an acoustic guitar and a vocal into my Darla (since I have no mixer, remember?), is there an order of steps I can take through the CEP/Direct X/VST plug-ins to give me more volume without excessive hiss? Do I remove hiss first? Do I amplify first?
I don't want to sound like I want my cake and to eat it, too. I'm just "ignorant" to the order of steps to take to get the best possible "effect" that I'm looking for.
The "effect" I need in this case is volume.

God, I hope that all makes sense to someone.....

 

[camn]

How broke? Go buy a berry 602 for $30 used, man!

xoxo

 

[mastahnke]

Do you have a receiver or something laying around? YOu might try hooking up your zoom box into it and then running the outputs of the receiver into your soundcard. It won't be pretty, but it could boost the levels some, I used to do it that way when I was a freshman in HS.

MIKE

 

[chrisharris]

This is just a shot in the dark, but have you tried increasing the "line in" or "microphone" volume levels on your computer? I have a crappy preamp, but I have to keep the volume levels on, like, 2 to keep them from clipping. I mean, with no preamp at ALL you should be able to get more signal than you're getting. If this suggestion is insulting, I apologize, but I'm the guy who actually checks to make sure that the new TV is plugged in when the troubleshooting section of the instruction manual says to make sure it's plugged in.