Noise w/ new preamp

M

mwalkervo

New member
hello all...i record voiceover in my home studio, running protools 8LE w/ m-box mini audio interface and at-4040 mic. i recently got an FMRaudio RNP mic preamp on expectations of getting a "warmer" sound. after finally figuring out how to get it to work/record, i'm finding the recording is much noisier than when i didn't use the pre. my "booth" is relatively quiet. in reading through some of the threads, i wonder if i'm "double amping" the sound and that could be causing the noise. any setup changes i can make? also, what exactly does the pad button on the interface do? in using the preamp, should i try to use more gain, and reduce the input on the interface?

thanks

marc
 
How is it connected cable wise. If it's XLR to the interface, you could be running it through both your preamp and the interfaces preamp. If that's unavoidable you might try 70% the good preamp, 30% gain on the lame one. But it is avoidable on a lot of interface if you connect with the TRS connection (line in) versus XLR (mic in). Although that depends on the interface.

Of course some preamps are just noisy. The Art Tube MP I had at one time was pretty hissy IMO. At least if you pushed the gain to any degree. Sometimes it's just better to add gain digitally in post, then to push the preamps gain.

The pad button, if the signal is too hot down the chain, that helps weaken it so it's not cresting limits or outside of a comfort zone. Otherwise it just increases the noise floor (more gain for same signal strength) if it's enabled.
 
thanks for the quick reply...i run the mic xlr through the pre, then connect the pre to the interface with a trs cable. the interface connects to the computer via usb. i'll try playing around with the interface gain.

thanks again....

marc
 
You want to avoid going through the M-box preamps. If you can't do that, find it's unity point so that it neither adds nor subtracts level. You also want the interface gain to be set to its unity point.
 
mwalkervo said:
hello all...i record voiceover in my home studio, running protools 8LE w/ m-box mini audio interface and at-4040 mic. i recently got an FMRaudio RNP mic preamp on expectations of getting a "warmer" sound. after finally figuring out how to get it to work/record, i'm finding the recording is much noisier than when i didn't use the pre. my "booth" is relatively quiet. in reading through some of the threads, i wonder if i'm "double amping" the sound and that could be causing the noise. any setup changes i can make? also, what exactly does the pad button on the interface do? in using the preamp, should i try to use more gain, and reduce the input on the interface?

thanks

marc
Click to expand...

I bet you're amplifying the signal twice. You need to send the RNP outputs to the line level inserts on the mbox.
 
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