afternoon all,

i'm thinking about upgrading my interface and getting a preamp and i was just wondering what the best way to connect preamps to interfaces are generally?

surely if you connect the preamp to the interface you then use the interface's preamps too - which would make it pointless using a nice preamp in the first place?

sorry if this is very obvious but i'm just trying to get my head around it!

cheers
chris

It might be obvious Chris but it is still a very fair question and one that crops up quite often.

Yes, the vast majority of interfaces(and mixers) merely "pad down" the line input signal and apply it to the microphone pre amp, thus any shortcomings, noise, distortion etc in said mic amp get sent to the converters along with your pristeen,expensively hard won external pre amp signal!

Does this mattter? Probably not if the AI pre is pretty good anyway and/or the external pre is not absolutely S-of-A but it does make little sense to feed a Grace 101 via the attenated mic amp of a bog s Tascam!

One solution is a pre amp with its own converter, the Audient Mico is one of the very few to have this facility as standard and of course, one additional advantage is that you gain an extra 2 input channels. How many peeps S/PDIF inputs remain virginal?

Or you could use an AI that sports inserts. The humble Fast track pro is one such. Finally of course buy an AI with at least 2 dedicated line inputs. One firmly on the better than most rung of the quality ladder at the price is the NI Ka6.

Dave.

In addition to all that Dave has said, a lot of larger interfaces have a couple of mic preamps and a load of line-only inputs -- so use the line-only ones for external converters.

hugh

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Technical Editor, Sound On Sound

Hi guys,

Thanks very much for your advice, it's a lot clearer now!

Cheers
Chris