Mic Pre amp question!!!

well, buying a new mic with or without a preamp will not necessarily fix the problem of sounding like it's a "home recording cuz it doesn't sit in the music well."

that's a matter of "mixing" and it's both an art and a science and it takes good ears and a lot of skill and practice and having people help you learn it doesn't hurt either.

IF you get this mic it does not require a separate preamp.  you would connect it to the fast track or the firewire device using the LINE input of the soundcard instead of plugging it into the mic pre.

I had to look the mic up because this is actually the first mic I remember seeing built this way.  personally I would prefer separate pieces to give me more control over the sound, but I'm not saying this mic is bad.

that was my initial reaction as well, but I searched and according to the MXL website, the v87 has a preamp and an output transformer built into it.

http://www.mxlmics.com/microphones/studio/V87/
the "tech specs" tab does not have good output information on it, so I could be wrong about the level of output it provides, but I was going on what the description said about the fet preamp and output transformer to base my supposition.

ok

I'm not arguing about it, I believe you both.  like I said it was my initial reaction as well. 

but why does it have an output transformer on it?  what purpose does that serve on a mic going into an external preamp?  the only reason I can think of would be poor design of the circuit to begin with and masking that with an impedance matching transformer.

Many great mics have an output transformers.   All the classic Neumann's have them including U87 (basically anything with a Uxx), It is for better impedance bridging, isolation, and just provides a beefier sound. 

 Transformer-less mics have been all the rage the past couple decades, but it has led to some pretty stale sounding designs.  The newest trend is to put them back in, if just for the pleasant distortion it adds to the sound.  

Not to further muddy the water, but...

a transformer can be found at the output of any microphone type (moving magnet, ribbon, condenser, carbon<G>), and it can serve different purposes, from isolation to level shifting to impedance matching.

a preamplifier is most often found in condenser and ribbon microphones, but it could be found anywhere as well. These preamplifiers are intended to bring the very low output level of a condenser or ribbon element up to nominal microphone level, or in a couple of oddball cases, line level.

Some DC powered microphones have circuits that look a little like preamplifiers, but they are really just voltage followers, and they are used to buffer impedance mismatches.

Some DC powered microphones have circuits that look a little like preamplifiers, but they are really line drivers, and they can boost current, or buffer impedance mismatches, or both.

None of which makes all that big a difference, really... the combination of microphone element, capsule enclosure, active and passive stages all combine to make a microphone sound the way it does.

Now specifically addressing the active circuit in a microphone - it's there because the microphone would not work without it, and it has little or nothing to do with the external preamplier. And it definitely does not indicate poor design.

A modern condenser microphone provides a very tiny output. It must be amplified. And some of these elements have an insanely high source impedance, and that must be buffered to prevent the subsequent wiring from swamping it.

A modern ribbon microphone has an output that is almost the same as other dynamic microphones, but the devil is in the details, and that extra 10 dB to 20 dB right at the capsule can be a devil of a detail!

Needless to say, the actual output level from a microphone is directly proportional to the air moving in front of it. If you've ever used a TLM-103 you probably discovered that you could use it without an external preamplifier when you stuck it in front of a drum head or loudspeaker.

Does that help at all?