pre amp curiosity

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sixer2007

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I'm new to recording and don't have much gear yet. I basically have a small interface and a few mics + some free plugins.

I've been learning a bunch about pre amps, and i'm wondering what would happen if i ran a pre amp through my interface that has built in ones. Would the new pre make any difference? (I'm assuming that the pre in my interface aren't too great...)

I have found a ton of info on what pre amps do, but not much on how to actually use them for good. any thoughts?
 
That scenario would most likely be using them for evil.... depending how you hooked it up.

You don't need two preamps in line as that will be too much gain / noise, however if your interface has a line level input as well, you could bypass the existing interface pres..

What interface are we talking about here?
 
A couple ways to see this. First question would be are there line inputs on the interface?

It's not uncommon for a mixer or interface to use the same amp circuit for the mic input and the line level input that you would run an external device like that, just with the voltage reduced for the line input.
If that circuit is fairly true (accurate) you could presume it might pass on faithfully what ever is feed in.
But then the difference in pre's can be quite small, so whether this actually turns out- I don't know. My experience has been that pre upgrades did make for improvements (from older Mackie mixer's to..) But it was always direct out from them to the A/D converter, never stacked like that.
Presumably it would be easier for something of high fidelity to pass the qualities of something with a lot of character, than vice versa.
 
I would agree with mixsit. As long as you're running the external pre amps thru the Line inputs of the interface, you should hear some improvement. It's likely that the Line level inputs are just the same as the mics on that kind of interface so you will hear some colouration form them but, you'll still hear the improvements.
 
preamps can "taint" the color of you recording.
if you are new at this... here is my 2 cents... worry more about the position of the mics. This will have much more of an impact on your sound.
 
Preamps are over rated. They're not nearly as important as your mics, monitors and possibly your DAC.

Although, having a rack full of Neves or API's doesn't hurt.

Cheers :)
 
I'd agree that running one preamp into another isn't likely to give you an improvement in sound that you'd notice at this stage. An upgrade to you mic locker or entire interface/preamp situation would probably be money better spent at this point. Good luck!
 
if we all understood what a preamp is actually for than it would be take more seriously. So in plain english. Mics converts your sounds into electrical signals. However the signals your mic produces are weak. Thats why some smart chap found a way to boost that signal so we can use it properly. Either using tubes, or after albert einstien came around we got trasistors(solid state). Obviously we want these signals to be boosted faithfully. And usually the better the preamp, the more potential comes from our mic. Placement is a different issue...
In short get a decent preamp or use the one on your interface if it works fine.
 
Generally speaking, if you don't need a preamp, you don't add it just because.

Some people do this with tube preamps, which I think is a mistake. The reasons you need a preamp are:

1) The hardware won't work without it (complete the circuit, like using a condenser mic requiring phantom voltage is the most common, or maybe you don't have any XLR at all)
2) The source needs gain (too weak in its signal, almost always it will be the first rather than this, but it could happen)
3) The source needs to be manipulated in levels (volume or effects like reverb, etc)
4) The signal needs manipulating in some other way I had not considered
 
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