Members zinzin Posted January 1, 2007 Members Share Posted January 1, 2007 i am (as all of you ) trying to improve my home-recording setup for decent sounding demos. this is my current chain: ================ MIC'S (shure sm57 and MXL V67 | PHONIC MIXER MU1202 | ORIGINAL SOUNDCARD MAC G3 | CUBASE 1. i am thinking of buying some mic-preamp or channelstrip like the ART TPS II, the SM PRO AUDIO TB202, the ART TUBE MP STUDIO V3 or the STUDIO PROJECTS VTB1. you see, they are all in the 90-150 Euro priceclass - that's my budget. 2. should i buy a new soundcard? i have the old MAC G3 (its like 7 years old but works perfectly) 3. what would be the biggest improvement? a new soundcard or a new pre-amp? both? would that "really" be an improvement for my sound or just a waste of money as my budget is rather low? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members where02190 Posted January 1, 2007 Members Share Posted January 1, 2007 Get a good pre/converter. Consumer soundcards are useless for anything quality in audio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 1, 2007 Members Share Posted January 1, 2007 Get a decent interface (with a mic preamp, obviously) that has USB or firewire connectivity, and you can bypass the need for a soundcard installed in your computer. M-Audio makes decent stuff for cheap, and there are other manufacturers as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zinzin Posted January 1, 2007 Author Members Share Posted January 1, 2007 can a standard soundcard really lower the quality of a good, tube pre-amp driven incoming signal? and does a USB bypass the soundcard? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted January 1, 2007 Members Share Posted January 1, 2007 Originally posted by zinzin can a standard soundcard really lower the quality of a good, tube pre-amp driven incoming signal?and does a USB bypass the soundcard? Yes to both questions. If you are using a substandard soundcard, it will seriously degrade the signal no matter what has come before it. It will not matter whether you are using a Brauner microphone into a Neve mic preamp or you are using a piece of garbage Behringer - a substandard soundcard will degrade your signal. The USB device bypasses the soundcard because the conversion has occurred in the interface device, and the information is supplied to the computer via USB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GZsound Posted January 1, 2007 Members Share Posted January 1, 2007 Very true advice. Putting money into higher quality front end components while using a consumer sound card is like gold plating your Volkswagon bug wheels.. You can get decent Firewire interfaces with decent preamps and solve both problems at once. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brandondrury1 Posted January 8, 2007 Members Share Posted January 8, 2007 I'd go with the soundcard too. Preamps are over rated. I've built a tool that'll save you hours of time finding the right soundcard. See my signature. Brandon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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