interface pre amp revalation and question

so here I am after days of mic checks between my FA-66 and my bluetube pluged into my FA-66
and I have come to the sad realization I have wasted my money on preonus.....(cant use the eq unit or the copressor
without the pre) my FA-66 is much better ...good,... I supose , or is it the fact that there is no direct line in on the FA-66
and I am double pre amping? and the rca hookups on the back dont cut it, here is my thing, after wasting money
and always wanting more sh#t, Im shure my wife will cut me off, is there a GOOD mic pre for under 550 dollars?
if not Im going motu ultralite mk3 and Im shure ( always am at 1st ha ha ) that this should work. look I make hip hop music and the fa-66 is damn close but not quite there and I hate the phantom power switch on the back.

any suggestions on pres or how the motu interfaces preamps are

you al have been so helpfull thank you


also anyone have opinion on the art tube PAC its on sale and Ive heard good things thanks Ben

I've heard really good things about the Groove Tubes "The Brick" and it runs $400. SOS states alternatives to "The Brick" include the SPL Gold Mic (which has two channels), the Aphex 207 and Universal Audio's Solo 110 (both single channel).

ORIGINAL: bennisixx
... I supose , or is it the fact that there is no direct line in on the FA-66
and I am double pre amping?...

Uh, yeah. That would be a problem with this kind of arrangement.

Try recording with the blue tube straight in to your converter or soundcard or whatever and see how you like it.

Feeding a line output into a mic preamp is not generally considered best practice. What you were looking for was not a preamp but an eq/compressor. you *can* buy those, then insert them between the preamp and the soundcard/converter. Because they go after the preamp, you can also use plugins, but I am guessing that you have heard or read somewhere that hardware sounds better or that some famous producer always uses an eq before recording or some such, so you are probably not interested in using plugins.

The broken record advice I always give that nobody ever listens to is: before you spend another dime on recording equipment, go book a few hours in a real studio and just play with all of their stuff. The engineer will show you how to use it, what they would pick, what the differences are, and so on. And you can hear it all on your voice, in your style, and you can take the tracks home and see how they fit in with your material and so on. The $200 you spend on studio time will save you thousands, and more importantly will point you towards the right stuff, and will show exactly where to spend money and exactly what the differences are.

Or, you can just keep spending your whole budget on random pieces of kit, hoping that one of them turns out to be the holy grail.

My 2c, anyway.

Cheers.