How to Connect an External Mic Preamp to an Audio Interface

whether you're not happy with your audio interface's built-in mic preamps or maybe you just want to add some analog flavor to your recordings adding an external mic preamp can help with both of these things and in this video i'm going to show you how to connect an outboard mic preamp to an audio interface i'm zane welcome to audio tech tv where it's my goal to help you conquer the tech so you can unleash your creative beast and i've included links down in the description to all of the stuff that i'm using here today but you don't need the same audio interface or the same microphone preamp the basics are pretty much going to be the same no matter what mic preamp or audio interface you have so let's jump in the mic preamp that i'm using for this is the golden age project's pre-73 mk3 but like i said this method should work with most consumer grade microphone preamps and what you'll need is a cable like this one right here it's a balanced trs cable now you can use like a regular ts cable if you really wanted to but if your audio interface and your microphone preamp support balance cables then i highly recommend using those as they can cut down on some of the interference that may get into your signal path all right what we want to do now is connect one end of the cable to the output on the microphone preamp and then the other end is going to go into the input on your audio interface and now you want to make sure that you turn the gain on your audio interface all the way down so it's not up at all and then if it's an audio interface like this one you want to make sure that it's set to line and not instrument you don't want it plugged into an instrument input you want it in a line input now some mic preamps like this one might have an xlr output and you might be tempted to get an xlr cable like a microphone cable that has xlr on both ends and plug the one end into the mic preamp and then go from the output on there and go to the mic input on your audio interface using the xlr cable on both ends and this is going to be incorrect because now you're going to two different mic preamps because you're going from your mic preamp that's external to the mic preamp that's on the audio interface and this could create some noise there's going to be some difference in impedance levels and if you accidentally hit the phantom power on your audio interface it could damage your equipment so if your mic preamp does have the xlr output and that's the only option then get one of the xlr to quarter inch cables and then you could plug the xlr to the output of your mic preamp and the quarter inch would go into the line input on your audio interface all right i just quickly want to ask if you're enjoying this video so far and getting some value out of it can you please give it a thumbs up it really helps my channel out and i appreciate it so much and why not subscribe while you're at it now back into the video so now what i'm going to do is i have a microphone connected to the mic preamp and i'm going to start recording that and i'm going to adjust the output level on the mic preamp so you can see that you're controlling the levels on the mic pre and it doesn't matter that you have the gain turned down on your audio interface all right so i'm talking into the microphone right now and adjusting the gain on the mic preamp as i talk and you can see the levels going up in our software right there and they're going up up up that's a little hot so we'll turn it back now and you can see that we're controlling the levels with the microphone preamp and it doesn't matter that the gain on the audio interface is turned all the way down this is just being controlled by the external mic preamp another cool thing about connecting a mic preamp like this is that you can connect a guitar or bass guitar into it as you can see this one has a di on the front and this is going to give you some added character to your guitar or bass and i record all of my bass tracks this way i really like the way they sound going through the pre-73 mic preamp getting the sound in the tone that you want when recording will make things way easier on you than trying to achieve that sound through mixing and editing and adding plugins start with great sounding tracks and your mixing life is going to be so much easier also sometimes adding a little old-school analog character is a nice added touch that can help you sound different from other home studio musicians now if you want to check out some more music production tips for beginners click up here or click down here to see what youtube recommends if you like this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zayn keep creating and we'll talk soon

Channel: Audio Tech TV

Views: 58,239

Keywords: microphone preamp, mic preamp, mic pre, mic preamps, recording studio, budget mic preamp, preamp, home studio, microphone, microphone preamplifier, preamplifier, budget home recording studio, recording with a mic, analog sound, audio gear, budget preamp, golden age project, golden age project pre-73 mkiii, gap pre73, pre73, golden age premier pre 73, golden age pre73, golden age premier pre-73, golden age pre 73, how to connect mic preamp, connect mic preamp to audio interface

Id: At3gAgFHl9M

Length: 4min 50sec (290 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021