Multiple preamps out to one input

  • Thread starter Thread starter Slackmaster2K
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Slackmaster2K

Slackmaster2K

Gone
Here's my dumb question:

I'm should be receiving my ART Tube MP today with any luck. I got the single channel version because it's what I could afford right now...and there's no price break for the dual channel.

Very soon I might come in to several new (used, actually) SM57-quality microphones. Using multiple microphones on my amp is what I will want to do.

I realize that it wouldn't make sense to plug the tube MP into the crappy pre's on my mixer. So if I want to use more than one microphone, I would plug the primary mike into the ART MP, and the ambient mics into the "crappy" mixer.

Now the problem is getting them into the same source. Should I simply buy or build a Y style adapter to send the mixer signal and the ART MP signal to the soundcard?

Are there simple passive mixers available that I can simply plug everything into (basically a glorified Y cable)?

How hard would it be to make a simple, quiet little device like that? Something that wouldn't change the sound of the signal at all....a patch bay I guess it'd be.

I'm very much in the experimenting stage so please don't get down on me and tell me to buy this or that for $1000. I only spend money when I'm confident with my knowledge (or desperate, heh). This will be my first experience with a real, decent preamp...and with multiple mikes (unless you include the Walmart Kareokee mike I sometimes stick behind my amp...weird sounds from that thing).

Thanks,

Slackmaster 2000
 
Hey Slackman, I know exactly what you are talking about here. And, I have an excellent solution that will not require you to do anything different, or to buy anything further.

Even a crappy sound card will record in stereo. So, take the output of the ART and run into one sider (left?) and run a mono output from your "crappy" mixer into the other side (right?). Even if you wind up with a stereo wave file, you can use software later to seperate them from each other to make two tracks. I am sure that your software will support a lot of tracks, so using extra ones gives you more options.

If you think of the opportunities that you will have over the way that you were thinking, you will see that this is the best solution.

By having two tracks of the same thing from the same source you can adjust the blend at mix, instead of having to get it just right while recording. Both tracks can have different eq's. You can track delay either of them. Etc........You could even just apply effects to one of the tracks. So much versatility!!!

You are set. You just needed someone to point out the obvious to you. No need for additional gear or cables.

You outta pay me for this one..... :)

Ed
 
S2K:

Does your mixer have non-amplified as well as amplified channels? I know the little Mackie I have does; when I do what I think you are saying that you want to do, I pass a preamp'd signal through one of the non-amplified channels on my mixer. I also flatten the eq on that channel so the sound is only colored by the outboard preamp..in your case the Tube MP.

If you *have* to bring the Tube MP signal in seperate from your mixer, and your souncard is similar to mine (I have a SBLive Value, basically a gaming card), it only has one stereo input for the line-in which requires a y-cable (cheap) to bring in channels from two sources. With the y-cable you can split the signal from your Tube MP to one side (L or R) and the signal from your mixer to the other. Then, follow Ed's advice and copy the tracks to make each a stereo track.

BTW Ed: Sorry if it seemed like I was slamming you in another post the other day, I was having a bad day...no malice intended. I'm imposing a new rule at the Silva household to stay out of any heated exchanges at the BBS.

dmc
 
No need to apologize at all. Heated exhanges are open to all. I would not have posted anything if I was not prepared for good and bad responses. Trust me, for every slam I got concerning that post, I got emails from people that were right behind me on it. Not that any of it really matters. I said what I said, I feel better now... :)

Ed
 
Ah the magic of stereo. Duh. Thanks Ed and everyone!

I'll get ahold of a Y-cable that will work. 2 mono to stereo...

What I was *thinking* was that you can SPLIT signals, but you can't simply COMBINE signals using a Y-cable. We'd all be able to throw our mixers in the toilet. I have a diagram of a small circuit that will allow this a little better via a couple resistors...I might make it just for fun.

dmc:

My "mixer" is a stupid 4-track. It has a line/mic switch on the first two ins. I'm pretty sure that it's just a gain switch though, meaning that all of my inputs are amped....except maybe the tape inputs. I'll have to look.

The soundcard I use for my magical recordings is an old SB16. Yeehaw. :)

Thanks all.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Hey Slackman,

I just bought a Lynx One card, www.lynxstudio.com and am about ready to install it!!!! 24bit converters, word clock sync, dual duplex midi ports, 96khz digital, etc.....I feel for your old SB16.....But I am sure that it works alright.

Gotta get to the install...

Ed
 
Cool!

I checked the card out a little bit. I must admit that I don't know too much about high-end audio cards, but the specs look great.

What's with the connectors? Do you have to use that crazy-ass split cable from hell to plug into the card or is there a breakout box? At first I thought it had to be hooked up to a digital mixer or something.

Let us know how the install goes and how the card works out. I'm sort of "half" shopping for a new card myself....well, looking I guess.

Slackmaster 2000
 
About the connectors.

The card card two D-sub connectors on the back. One handles the Analog I/O, and the Digital I/O. The other handles the two midi ports and the Word Clock I/O. The converters are on the card. They supply you with "Space Shuttle" wire with the card. You just plug in the D-subs to the card, then the other cables to where ever you need them to go.

Here is my setup.

I have the Analog I/O's going to the patch bay and normalled to the output of my mixer. Now I can insert in a preamp and/or compressor while mixing to hard drive.

I have the AES/EBU I/O going to my Fostex D-5 DAT player. Further, the D-5 is connected to and from my Marantz CD Recorder via the Toslink Optical ports. This way, I am fully digital from the soundcard to both the other units.

I am hooking up the midi cables to my mixer (Soundcraft Ghost). I will then use Cakewalk Pro 9 to "record" my mutes on the mixer.

I will be hooking up the Word Clock I/O to my BRC (the ADAT controller) so that the sound card gets it's clock from the BRC. Thus, the console should be sync'd to the ADAT's also. But, my experience has been that anything midi is going to be a major pain in the ass to configure before it works right..... :)

The install went so smooth that I thought that something must be wrong. I didn't need to uninstall my cheap soundcard, so I can use it for additional midi I/O, and low fi analog if need be (don't know why I would want unbalanced 16 bit 44.1khz converters though.... :) ). The driver installed in like 2 nanoseconds or something and it is very stable so far.

The converters sound killer!!!! I have to go back now and remaster all my stuff damnit!!! I can hear all the distortion, the Eq tweeks that are just off the mark, and the general overall yuk on my mixes. I think once I start posting the new stuff you will hear quite a difference. Just hearing music through nice converters makes it all better.

It came with Sampitude Basic. I am not sure about this program. I am going to have to try it out a bit more before passing judgement on it. It's major downfall is that it only works with 16 bit 44.1khz files!!! So the potential of my card is kind of wasted. I can't even really import ADAT tracks and use that software to edit!!! But, like the guy at the store said, it is a good program to check and see if I like their way of doing things, and then maybe upgrade to their 2496 software.

Next up is a new hard drive. Really looking to score a 7200 rpm LVD drive (not a SCSI unless I can get it at a steal WITH an adapter card!!!) A 7200 rpm UDMA 33 would be just fine for me. Need at least 10 gigs.

After that, gotta get a lot more RAM. I have 128MB pc-100, but, I need to fill all the slots on the motherboard to be cool.

I am thinking of overclocking my Celeron 400 and my Monster Fusion 16MB video card too. Got any thoughts on that??? :)

But before all of that, I have to repartition the hard drive, and get stuff back to FAT 16 so that I can run Windows 95 so that I can finally use my Alesis ADAT Edit card. Do those partitioning programs really let you repartition and reformat without losing data??? It would be worth buying if it did!!!

Anyway, I am mastering a CD for a band tomorrow. I am doing digital transfers from the DAT. I did transfer one song tonight. Dynamically, it is a mess!!! The kick drum hogs up about 10db of the headroom on the mix. So, there is no real way of using any digital plugins that I have right now to limit the punk!!! Gonna play with running the DAT to my Dual MP, then to the Dual Levelar and see if I can't settle down the meters first. Will go into the computer at 24/48, so I shouldn't really lose much fidelity provided that the preamp compression doesn't mess things up. This band mixed their DEMO at a studio that uses an O2R. What a hunk of junk. The problem with an O2R is that it sounds sterile, and it takes way too long to work on it. I can do about 5 adjustments on my Ghost in the time it takes you to do 1 on the O2R.

That is a point that people never consider with all this automated, non-tactile equipment, the "f*ck it" factor. You get so damn tired of trying to find the right sceen, scrolling, not being able to compare visually two channels side by side, etc...that after a while you just kind of settle for something that sounds sub-par. That is one of the reasons that I say that home type setups can't compete with Pro Studios, you can't work fast enough to keep up with the good ideas. You start getting hearing fatigue and start making bad decisions. Some functions are so hard to do that you can kid yourself into thinking that it sounds fine...etc...etc....etc.....Anyway, I am sinning here (sin means to miss the mark) and am starting to ramble.

Really look into that LynxOne card. For now, it would be hard to find something that works as well in it's price range. And don't everyone go and tell me how wonderful their card is!!! I am sure they are for 95/98 setups, but some of us are OS snobs and prefer a real OS that don't kill itself everytime it boots!!! :) The LynxOne card works well and is fully functional on NT, something that Events stuff, Aarvrk (or however it is spelled) and even some of the Digidesign stuff won't work on. I am not propared to give up my computer to just recording quite yet, so 95/98 just is not going to work with the variety of software that I use. Anyway.......

Slackman, let me know about those repartitioning programs. I could just start all over again, and that may be the best thing to do, but if another option will work fine, well, I am all for it.

Ed
 
sonusman:

Dual boot man! Going to FAT16 is not a great option and you probably won't be happy.
There are FAT32 drivers for NT and I believe there are NTFS drivers available for Win95. All of these are 3rd party of course.

I use the FAT32 drivers for NT and am SOO happy running both NT and 98. I can run games and internet applications and whatnot in 98 while saving NT for recording only. (If it wasn't for the DX limitation, I would use NT for everything...hurry up win2000)

Here's a link that will make you real happy. I'm not sure if it's warez or not. Doesn't appear to be that type of site. They work:
http://www.radek.ampr.org/MenuOther.html

Tip: NT on a 1 or 2GB FAT16 PRIMARY partition on the first disk. Win98 on FAT32 on the remaining partition.

As far as programs like PartitionMagic are concerned....I suppose they work. They've been around for a long time. It might be worth your time to check em out....but you're probably going to have to do a complete reinstall if you choose to dual boot using NT's OS loader.


Slackmaster 2000
 
Hey Ed! This is great news to those shying away from the PC route because of the nice converters in an ADAT machine. If I read you right- this $550 card has two analog ins that match the conversion quality of two channels of a $2000 ADAT machine. I'm hoping that someone will soon offer something like this with four analog ins/outs and a break-out box with jacks already set up for XLR and 1/4" I/O.
 
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