Outboard Preamp with a USB Audio Interface

[David McCrea]

Hey guys,

There's a lot of talk about Mic Preamps and how they can really improve the recording through your mic. Just wondering if it's possible for me to use an outboard preamp with my Tascam US-122L, bearing in mind that this has an inboard preamp, with no way of bypassing it.

Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance!

Dave.

 

[axeman69]

Hey guys,

There's a lot of talk about Mic Preamps and how they can really improve the recording through your mic. Just wondering if it's possible for me to use an outboard preamp with my Tascam US-122L, bearing in mind that this has an inboard preamp, with no way of bypassing it.

Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance!

Dave.

If it has a line in, you're bypassing the preamp.

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

If it has a line in, you're bypassing the preamp.

Not necessarily (in fact probably not).

In most cheap gear there's simply a pad on the input when set to "Line". So it's just attenuating the signal sent through the mic pre rather than bypassing it. It's the same amp, same input.

Or like the Mic Pres on my E-MU 1820m there's a little mark really low down on the gain knob which is marked as "line". So rather than having a pad in-line, your just turning the preamp down really low so that the line level signal doesn't overload the input and cause distortion.

You usually have to spend a bit of money to get gear which has proper line and mic inputs which are actually independent of one another.

 

[MOFO Pro]

On a positive note... preamps tend to color the output more on the higher gain levels... sure, your passing your preamplified signal through additional circuitry... but the effect is minimized by the lower gain level... It's not ideal, but it's not like it's never done...