You NEED an External Mic Preamp - 3 Reasons Why
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- Опубліковано 14 лип 2024
- The mic preamps in our audio interfaces are good enough for many of us. But that doesn't mean there aren't valid reasons to invest in an external mic preamp. Today I want to go over 3 reasons why an external mic preamp might be a good investment for your studio.
CHAPTERS
0:00 - You NEED an External Preamp - 3 Reasons Why
0:22 - External Preamps Have More Gain
1:05 - Using Outboard Gear when Tracking
1:36 - External Preamps can add Colour to your Sound
WATCH THESE TOO
Outboard Gear. Where to Start?
• Outboard Gear - Where ...
Do you NEED an External Mic Preamp? Or is your Audio Interface good enough?
• Do you NEED an Externa...
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Recording music at home doesn't need to be difficult. Any musician, whether you're a guitarist, bassist, drummer, can easily record and produce great sounding tracks in your home studio. My goal is to help you make the recording process as easy as possible.
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Thanks for keeping it simple...EVEN i was able to 100% understand all your points....YES! Tubs in a preamp are awesome & so are YOU!!
lol thanks for the kind words Marcus! And yes, tubes are awesome =D
Great video! Short and to the point with decent production quality. More like this please
Lol thanks. If you have any suggestions to improve the videos feel free to leave some ideas
@@EverythingMusicRecording not at all. In fact I've watched hundreds of these types of videos over the years and you've successfully evaded all of my complaints/issues with the majority of them. Many are too long and drawn out. Too much nattering. A lot of wasted time before I learn anything. Poorly put together so very distracting. Etc... Your video is precisely the opposite of all of this. I learned precisely what you told me I would in a clear, timely and concise fashion. Thanks for being the antidote my man
Oh fair enough, thanks, and good to know 🙂
I’ve actually gotten very similar comment’s to yours multiple times, which is great because it means you and others are learning what I set out to teach in the videos, and no one feels like their time is being wasted.
I actually thought you were going to comment on the fact I tend to slip in and out of focus slightly depending on how I’m moving around lol
I sure hope you keep up your grind, bro. You do a GREAT job here! You actually KNOW what you’re talking about, and you get straight to the point. Subbed!
Thanks Michael!! I try to make the world a better place 😀
@@EverythingMusicRecording Mission accomplished! 😃👍🏻
Thanks for sharing.
No problem Norman
I use a Grace 101M with my Motu M4. With a Mojave MA-200. Great interface but I can still hear a difference with the outboard pre. That’s why I use it.
Sweet. Yea it’s always nice to have an option between interface pres and an external preamp for sure Ron 🙂
If I want to track with outboard compression (thus rising noise floor via make up gain), would it make sense to use an external preamp to provide the highest clean gain possible before the compression takes place in order to make this noise floor less present against the instrument signal?
Thanks for sharing. I'm new to all of this and I've been having the hardest time trying to decide whether or not I should get the shure sm7b with a pre-amp such as the cloud lifter or just a fethead. Now that you mentioned that the sm7b has a very low output, I wonder if that's a bad thing and I should reconsider getting it? I'm trying to start a youtube channel where I'll teach English to non-English speakers, so I need my voice to be very clear so my viewers can emulate the sounds correctly. I was thinking to get the soundrite scarlet 2i2 + triton audio fethead (because I rather spend more on the mic)
Of course you don't have to answer but if you find the time, I'd appreciate it a lot. Hope I can come back to this video by the end of the year and have a better understanding of the suggestions you're making.
Thank you kindly!
SM7B's are great mics. You can't really go wrong. An alternative is the ElectroVoice RE20. Both would benefit from either a cloudlifter or a fethead. I haven't used a cloudlifter but I have my mic for videos plugged into the Fethead Phantom and its been great, so I would assume the fethead for dynamic mics is also great.
You also can't go wrong with the 2i2. I've had my first gen 18i20 for years now and it's been bulletproof for me.
Either way to get started you'd be hard pressed to go wrong with either mic and a 2i2 =)
@@EverythingMusicRecording thank you for taking the time to answer my question! In the end, I did decide to get the sm7b and the motu m2 interface. I was super happy with how it sounds after a bit of tweaking in post, but not live, so I decided to get the Triton audio fethead and oh man! I am super happy with the sound!
Thanks again for sharing your knowledge with the world and for the reply. I appreciate it you.
Cheers from Mexico!
Can I use an external preamp as a insert effect in daw and bounce all tracks one by one Then is it possible to add those consoles colours to all tracks or it doesn't work that way?
You can yes, but that would be very time consuming. If you had a 4 minute song with 30 tracks it would take 2 hours minimum. And that wouldn’t include the setup time for each track. But you could absolutely do that if you wanted too.
What would be better (and many do this same thing) is if your preamp is 2 channel (or even if it’s single channel but you have two of the same pre) just use it as the first insert on your master bus. Then you can run your whole mix though it in one simple go 🙂
@@EverythingMusicRecording yes nice thank you my man! 🙏🙏
do more about it plzz cool clip
Tomorrow’s video is comparing preamps to channel strips if that helps lol. Was there a specific part you wanted me to dive into for a future video?
@@EverythingMusicRecording people said that external mic pre fire up or power up the mic which has weak output, how the mic becomes strong with mic pre and adjusting input gain and output trim to get the right gain on DAW. Thanks!
Hey hey. So your first statement you’ve said reads wrong on the surface, but is correct , and ties into what I was talking about with the available gain on an external preamp. Lol let me explain.
An external mic pre CANNOT improve the output level of a mic. It can only amplify it. And how much it can amplify it depends on the preamp being used.
Remember that the average amount of gain on most audio interfaces is approx 55ish dB per mic pre. If you bought a Neve 1073SPX it has about 60dB of gain. So if you were using a very low output mic like a Shure SM7B with either of these, yes you’ll be able to amplify the level from the Shure a little more with the Neve, but only by 5dB at the most. This is the reason things like the Cloud Lifter exist.
A Focusrite ISA has upwards of 80dB of gain so it can amplify the signal from that same SM7B about 25 dB more than your typical audio interface. So yes, an external mic pre can usually amplify the signal from a low output mic more than an audio interface, but by how much still depends on the mic pre you’re using.
A mic becomes “strong” with an external mic pre. “Strong” is the wrong word. Different is what you’re looking for. The mic pres in audio interfaces today are VERY good, but also very clean and transparent. They are not designed to impart a sound (in most cases) where as a Neve, API, and many other famous mic pres impart a colour on the sound of whatever you plug into them. And most all mic pres sound the same at lower gain levels. It’s not until you start driving them that the colour starts to come out. The harder you hit them, the more colour you get. But the mic pres on an audio interface are not designed to do this. So absolutely that can make a mic sound strong, or fat, or punchy, but each mic pre will have a different colour as well, so that will also vary.
Lastly the input gain and output level. Yes. An audio interface will only have an input gain. But again this is because those preamps are not designed to be driven hard and their signal is going directly to your AD converters and into your DAW.
With an external mic pre we have to be able to control the output level of the preamp in order to drive the unit and get any colour we might be after. If we can’t adjust the output level then we will be hitting the next piece of gear in the chain (be it an audio interface, EQ, compressor, etc) waaaaay too hot. So this becomes a conversation about gain staging.
The last thing I want to mention that I explained in detail in another video is that an external mic pre also makes a VERY small difference in the grand scheme of things. If you recorded a song with say, 30 tracks and used a Neve preamp on only the vocals. That Neve pre will have made almost zero impact on the sound of that track. Now if you recorded that same song and used the Neve pre on every track, now it will start to make a difference. This is why a Neve console sounds like a Neve console. Same with API, SSL, or any other console. It’s not one single component in those consoles that give them their sounds. It’s the sum of every component in those consoles working together that creates that sound.
I hope all of that made sense. If you have anymore questions feel free to ask 🙂
Mmmm