Tube Pre Question (ADL 600)

It really depends on what you are after. You are evidently using the tube pre ahead of the Delta 1010? I don't have that model but I do have a tube pre. You should have an some sort of an input gain and output gain and something along the line of a Tube blend to level the amount of distortion. When I am doing Vocals, I generally don't want distortion but I do want to add some thickness to my voice. I use a fairly clean sound for that. But sometimes I want a little "hair" on my bass track. For that I will dial in a little bit more distortion to fatten things up.

You're just going to have to fiddle with it and do some test recordings and learn what the settings will sound like in a mix. Most times, like everything else, what sounds good soloed won't cut it in a real mix.

So it seems like I am suppose to be able to drive it past 0 db.

Sure you can. It's just like any mixer main outs behave. You're just boosting the volume. Won't hurt a thing as long as you aren't clipping. You're going to boost the signal at some point anyway. If you were to record a signal at 0 VU or less, you'll have to apply some gain to it after you've recorded it probably or even volume envelopes won't give you enough boost in the mix. Some guys advocate recording at low levels with 24-bit but I don't really see the point of it for the above reason. And I've haven't noticed it sounding any better. But even if you were to manage to record all your tracks at a low level and mix them down to a stereo file, you're still gonna have to boost that stereo file to a proper listening level before you go to a CD. It seems silly to me not to just record a good hot signal to begin with as long as you don't overdo it.

However, final mastered recordings do not go higher than 0 db.

When I say, "If you were to record a signal at 0 VU or less, you'll have to apply some gain to it after you've recorded it probably or even volume envelopes won't give you enough boost in the mix" I'm referring to 0-VU on your mixer/pre-amp since that's what you were asking about. But the output of your mixer/pre being perfectly aligned to the input of your soundcard/record device ins is almost never gonna be the same. For instance, if I run a test tone at 0-VU on mymixer outs, it will show up as about -4 on my soundcard input meter. So what I'm saying is, don't worry about the signal being over 0-VU on your pre-amp. Going over 0-VU on that won't hurt anything. But if you try to keep your pre-amp outs at 0-VU but your soundcard ins are only reading -7-VU, that's a signal you'll probably end up boosting at some point down the line anyway. Hope that makes sense.

You got it. For a lot of things I'd rather avoid a tube pre and go with my mixer because a tube tends to boost highs and lows a little. That can be real desirable on a vocal or bass but maybe not so much on your synth's piano sound and so forth. Pushng the tube a little hot can be neat to do too on certain things. Rock drummers and bass players tend to like that sound a lot. Just try it and see what you think. It's the kind of sound that fits in better with rock/pop than with something like jazz or bluegrass. Just depends on what you're trying to achieve.