muzakal said:
Anyway, if you're recording your keyboard to the 1680, ideally you'd want to go direct, and if you can front a little extra investment, go through a preamp (if you're on a budget, presonus makes some decent stuff).
Basically, you'll go keyboard, to preamp, to mixer (some mixers already have built in preamps - mackie makes an okay pre), and then to recorder for example.
just my 2 pentz and worth just that.
-muzakal
Maybe I am missing something but why would he need a pre-amp with a keyboard? I am of the opinion that it is a bad idea, or if not bad, just a waste of money.
The output of a keyboard is at line level already, so it doesn’t need to be boosted. In the case of my keys, the output is totally frickin silent and clean (so silent that if I hook my monitors directly up to the keys, I can’t tell they are on till I hit a note, even at high volume).
Think about this though, they designed the sounds on a keyboard while using the amps in the keyboard itself... so if there is any weaknesses in the keyboard amps, they would have been compensated for when designing the sounds.
So all you would be doing is adding an unneeded piece of gear into the signal chain to color the sound (a bad thing) and to add its own noise and distortion. If you’re going for a certain effect on a given patch, I can see it... but in general? I have doubts.
I suppose if you had a really noisy keyboard amp then a preamp would do, but if your keys are such a POS, you should probably get a new one anyway.
If anyone can provide some knowledge in why using a pre amp might be a good practice for all keyboards, I would love to hear it. But there is NO WAY I am going to believe that the pres in a Mackie will do anything but harm the sound my keys make.
I record keys by plugging them directly into my recorder. No mixer, no pre-amp, no nothing.