Preamp

QUALITY....

is decided by the weakest link in the chain.

This stuff has always been out my my reach too, but have finally saved enough to get a decent quality piece of gear. So do mean an A/D converter to work with a mic pre or instead of?

ultimately, you'll want both.

there's nothing wrong with upgrading your front end, at any time, even in increments of single pieces.


get the mic pre, it'll make you happy, improve your signal, and is a good step in overall upgrade.

the output of a standard analog mic pre will have both TRS and xlr....
so the fact that your line 6 interface has a spdif INPUT is irrelevant.



but you may not get the full bang for buck, until you have a comparable analog to digital convertor.

the outputs are really not the issue....

it's the quality of the conversion that matters.


i cannot tell you BOO about your Line 6 convertors....

and the output of the convertor doesn't matter, it's going in as USB, so you are restricted by whatever the usb bandwidth is.

1500-2000 is not what i would consider 'high quality'

and it all depends on how many channels you're talking....
one channel?
two?
16?

it's all relevant.....
one channel of mic pre with 2 grand to spend, is pretty sweet.....

Thank you batsbrew. Appreciate the suggestions. I was referring to a 1 or 2 channel mic pre. That'll be the best quality I'll ever have in the foreseeable future. The A Designs stuff really looks good.

Deisel401rs


This stuff has always been out my my reach too, but have finally saved enough to get a decent quality piece of gear. So do mean an A/D converter to work with a mic pre or instead of?

hello deisel. i meant to use with the pre, but honestly, that kind of gear is out of my league and i should not be making recommendations on it. i'm sure you'll research thoroughly before thunking 2 grand on the counter though. what ever you choose, make some good music with it.

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Got a chance to try out a Summit Audio 2BA-221. Yeah... great suffering balls of Christ that is one hell of a pre for under $700. I've been wanting to go the 500 series route, and still do, but I've got to have that 221 as well.

I don't know the UX8 sound quality, but as I said above convertor quality is about fourth or fifth on the list of things to upgrade if you are recording acoustics.  Decent room, good to great mic, a good, high-gain preamp would come first for me.  Closer to the source, sweeter the meat or something like that.  Reasons - a bad room will show up recording and during mixing (if you are doing the typical bedroom senerio).  A mic turns the acoustic signal into electrical - obviously if that is wrong there is nothing to do about it.  A good preamp let's you play with the mic in different positions, still driving the signal at a distance and not crapping out closer.  Transformers are nice for adding some roundness to the tone before turning into digitial.  Another nice thing to have is a good compressor/limiter going in to again round and even out the tone.

Then comes the AD, turning the electrical signal into a digital one so your computer can manipulate it.  The extra money spent here on quality is really .... smaller than the above analog items.  I mean, there are only a few ADDA chip makers which eveyone uses.  The clock differences costs money but mostly value is added in the analog part of the ADDA.  Good electronics components cost.

For a top notch in/out combo $2000 will do great for stereo.  For $1000 you can get the Lynx 4X4 PCI unit.  Pros use Lynx on their million sellers, and you can add more in/outs via ADAT for another $200 if you want.  Preamps - the GaP Pre 73 is a good, cheap preamp with character for $300, and the M-Audio DMP is a stereo, transformerless pre for -$200.  I've heard both and they are good.  Or $500 will get an ISA One, which is a high end, middle of the road sounding preamp.  Loads of gain, a little transformer sound and some other goodies in its brick-style body (preamp, separate DI, etc.)  Or you could get it and the optional AD ($400) to have a good input channel.

If you are serious it never hurts to go as expensive as you can.  Although you take a money hit w/ equipment, the good stuff will retain more of its value after you use it.  That is peace of mind, and means you can discount the equipment as the reason your recordings suck.  It must be the room, the performance, or your recording chops.   ;-)

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Deisel,

I meant once you get to really good equipment - it gives you confidence it ain't them.

And as I said, most interfaces these days provide good conversion and good preamps.  The bigger shortfall is in the preamps.  Most built-in preamps are good for loud sources, but once you start pushing the levels to get more sound from them it gets tougher.  Most don't have more than 60 dB of gain.  The ISA one can get up to 80 - and it doesn't break a sweat.  for the same reason it deals with intermintant louder sounds better too, even if the gain is high.

If you are happy w/ everything else but the convertor and preamp, that is where I'd put my money.  The API is a great unit w/ both.  You can get both in the Focusrite ISA a little cheaper.  Or you could just get the GaP Pre and see if that doesn't take you to the next level.  I mean, at some point you want a great channel or two.  How you get there is the hard decision(s).

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Reece,

right.  I forgot about that.

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