How and Why to Use External Preamps

hey Joe Gilder here from home studio corner when you get into recording for the first time it can be overwhelming there's a lot of different pieces equipment that you need there's a lot of jargon to work your way around and it can just seem pretty complicated one of the areas that is a sticking point for a lot of people is microphone preamps so let's talk about today and hopefully clear up some confusion a microphone we all know what a microphone is it spits out a really quiet low-level signal okay it's a mic level signal you can't record that it needs to be amplified to line level and that's what gets recorded into your system okay one of the most common questions that I get hey Joe do I need a preamp and the answer is yes but you're typically they're not understanding quite what's happening with the existing equipment that they own chances are you own some sort of audio interface okay something that has USB or firewire or Thunderbolt or whatever the latest connection is and they have some sort of connections like this so this is an older Presonus interface it has four microphone inputs here and it's got a bunch of inputs and outputs on the back so this plugs in USB to the computer I can plug my microphone into here adjust the volume and that gets recorded okay the thing to keep in mind is these are microphone preamps anytime you see a microphone input whether it's on a mixer or an interface if it says mic input it has a preamp attached to it because all microphones need to go through some sort of pre amplification before they're usable so this particular device has four microphone preamps on it they're labeled as mic 1 2 3 & 4 now where it can get a little tricky for folks you can absolutely make great recordings using the stock built-in microphone preamps on your interface different interfaces may have nicer ones than others but you can absolutely get a good recording for an example I'm gonna link below to a video I did where I showed how to set up a bedroom recording studio once I set it up I used this as my main interface and I recorded an entire song using just this in this microphone and it sounds great so if someone's trying to convince you that you can't possibly make good music without getting really fancy external microphone preamps tell them come talk to me because you absolutely can that being said you can make a case for having nicer upgraded external microphone preamps and that's what gets a lot of people a little bit confused you have microphone inputs here you may want some sort of external microphone preamp let's talk about that first hang on okay this is one of the preamps from my rack it's an older Presonus Eureka I think I've shown this to you in videos before this is an external standalone mic preamp it's also a channel strip that can be confusing channel strip simply means it's like a channel out of a console it has a microphone preamp and also may have an EQ and/or compressor section compressor here EQ here so for the purposes of this video let's just assume this is a single channel microphone preamp we can forget about the compression in EQ all preamps will have two things a microphone input and a line level output this particular period is awesome because it actually gives us two different types of line level outputs usually you only get one or the other so this one gives us an XLR line output and also a TRS or quarter-inch line level output if you're not familiar with the difference between balanced and unbalanced XLR all that I've got a video on that as well go check that out so how do you hook up an external preamp with your existing audio interface it's really easy you just face them to one another and do this I'm just kidding this is how it actually works take your microphone plug a microphone cable into it and run that to the mic input of your preamp now sometimes the connections on the back sometimes the connections on the front does not matter from your preamp you're gonna take the line output and run a cable some sort of a balanced cable could be XLR could be TRS from the output of the preamp to a line input on the audio interface now here's where it's going to get tricky and you're going to do a little bit of homework does your audio interface have line inputs chances are it does how do you know it'll look something like this line inputs [Applause] [Music] [Applause] if I was gonna use this Eureka with this audio interface I would take a quarter inch cable a balance quarter-inch TRS cable coming out of the output of the Eureka into one of these line inputs on the back a couple things to note most audio interfaces will have quarter-inch line inputs occasionally you will get XLR three prong mic cable connections four line inputs but for most home studio equipment it's got to be quarter-inch which means if you have a preamp that only gives you an XLR output you'll need some sort of cable or adapter that will go from XLR female to TRS quarter inch male those are good cables to have around in case a friend brings over a piece of equipment you want to plug it into your system that only really has quarter-inch inputs otherwise if your preamp already has a quarter-inch balanced output you can run that straight to a quarter-inch balanced input on your audio interface and you're good to go one common question you might have is is XLR better than TRS the three prong versus the quarter-inch no they're exactly the same from a connection standpoint one thing you might want to keep in mind you see these funny looking jacks on the front see how they're you can plug a microphone into them but you can also plug a quarter-inch jack these are called combo jacks that means you can plug either an XLR cable or a quarter-inch cable now on this particular one these first two are designated as instrument inputs these are not wanting to see a microphone preamp they're wanting to see something like a guitar or a bass these are instrument inputs that will actually run through the preamp to get that instrument up to line level because instrument levels is similar to microphone levels these inputs however are designated as line inputs these will essentially bypass the preamp these knobs over here and just go straight in specifically on this one if I set these preamp levels to straight up and down to zero then it won't be adding or taking away any volume they'll turn it's from instead of being preamp gain knobs they'll turn into trim knobs that allow me to adjust the volume up and down or just have it at unity which will mean the level all the level gains come from the preamp and that feeds just straight into the audio interface now for the million dollar question do you need an external preamp or can you get by with the stock preamps on your audio interface doesn't a preamp just increased volume why would I need to go with something fancy over just something that just turns up the volume well I'll answer your question with an example if you're an electric guitar player you know that a guitar amps job is not to simply increase volume right we don't want the exact sound of my guitar to come out of that amp I bought that amp because as its increasing the volume it's doing lots of other stuff to the sound different amps will give me different sounds the Fender amp will be pretty clean and it'll take peddle as well or the Vox amp the one over there that blonde looking thing it has a very mid-range II rock-and-roll sound without any pedals and it might be more appropriate for a particular song both are useful so on one level external microphone preamps can give you different sounds and different tones on another level they can be an upgrade overall to the quality of the sound itself how that works for my ears when I use my external preamps I hear the low-end feels a little warmer and it feels like it has a little bit more of just a nice character to it versus the stock preamps that sound a little more clean and a little more not sterile just very clean and very matter-of-fact the great thing is you can add all sorts of character after the fact inside your DAW or by moving the microphone to a cooler position and you can gain a lot of what you get from the nicer preamps by simply adjusting how you record that said I do love a nice quality external preamp and if you're at that point where you've been recording for a while and you've recorded a bunch of stuff and you've released a bunch of stuff I think at that point you qualify to start considering something like an external preamp you absolutely don't have to ever get one and it can certainly be a rabbit trail where you will throw tons of money into this thing that's not gonna solve all your problems but it can be a nice piece of equipment to have what's great about a nice external preamp is it'll make all your microphones sound better as well so it's like upgrading all your mics in addition to gaining an extra channel of priam alright that's it for me thanks so much for watching this if you want to get better at recording which will make you use tools like this much better you need to check out my recording cheat sheet it's over at recording cheat sheet calm it's 100% free the link is right here go check it out I'll see you in the next video is one big disappointment well maybe this thing but if it's all voices something bigger then I get back up and fight [Music] up and fight get back up and fire get back I'll get back up and fight

Channel: Joe Gilder • Home Studio Corner

Views: 286,030

Keywords: mixing, gear, home recording, equipment, joe gilder, presonus, studio one, home studio, preamplifier, microphone, preamp, mic, pre, external, XLR, TRS, balanced, cable

Id: HDWl3U7pGQk

Length: 10min 17sec (617 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018