What Is A Preamp, And Do I Need One? | Studio Lesson 🎛

hey guys this is Nitesh at Sweetwater in this video we'll be talking about preamps what they are what they do and different types of them that will help you choose the right one for your purposes before we dive in you should know that Sweetwater is not only a great resource for information about musical gear but also that we've got hundreds of thousands of products available in stock at any given time with sales engineers like myself waiting to help you out so visit us today at Sweetwater comm let's get started so what is a preamp preamp is short for pre amplifier a preamp is a kind of amplifier that's designed specifically to take really weak signals and well make them louder think about like a microphone when you plug it into something like a mixer or a recording interface what is going into is a kind of preamp you might wonder why you might be presenting your preamp with a weak signal to begin with so to better understand this we've got to talk about microphones as a kind of electrical device called a transducer a transducer that its most basic form is any kind of device that takes one form of energy in this case the vibrations of molecules in the air that we perceive as sound and transit transduce it into something that an electrical device like a mixer or a recording interface can use a voltage if you think about what a microphone is doing the diaphragm inside is responding to really really tiny vibrations of those air molecules so when that energy gets transduced into an electrical signal it's a really really tiny signal at the level of millivolts but our devices like mixers or recording interfaces or speakers can't really use that signal it's too low so that's why that microphone has to first go into a preamp that can give it the amount of gain necessary without inducing a lot of distortion or noise into the signal this is why preamps are a kind of specialty amplifier because they have to take that really weak signal and make it louder without inducing a lot of noise preamps do this in different ways there are different circuits there's different components that are used in different types of preamps to make this happen some use technologies like tubes that you might be familiar with some use transistors regardless of the kind of preamp at the end of the day it still taking your microphone signal and essentially making it louder in a clean or colored way so that the device is further down the chain can use that signal let's talk about different scenarios in which you might need a preamp let's say you're performing light with your band and you're singing into a microphone chances are you're going into a mixer like this one the microphone input on this mixer is a kind of preamp it takes a signal coming off of that microphone and helps you add gain to it so that the rest of the mixer can use that signal so that it can be mixed with other signals and then eventually be sent on to a recording device or monitors or your main PA speaker system same thing if you're using preamps in a recording environment let's say you're at home in your project studio recording a microphone on vocals or an instrument chances are you may be going through an interface like this one which microphone input on that interface would also be a preamp or you might be going through an outboard preamp like this one here which is more of a specialty piece that would still need to go into a different kind of device like a convertor downstream in any case in any of these situations you're still using a preamp which is helping to take your microphone signal and add gain to it so that the device is down the chain can use that signal any electrical device just by its very nature is going to add a little bit of noise to your signal right but preamps have to be designed in a specific way so that they can minimize that while giving you what you really want which is the sound of your microphone so that you can get a bunch of clean gain without adding that extra distortion or noise you'll see these things listed in technical specifications for preamps when you're picking them you'll see distortion listed as THD which stands for total harmonic distortion or the noise floor spec which refers to when no signal is passing through that preamp what is that idle noise floor both of these are important specs to keep in mind but at the end of the day we also need to remember that preamps are different flavors in our recording or live sound setups some preamps might color our sound or add character to our sound in a way that's pleasing to our ears others are designed to be very clean or transparent meaning that they don't add a lot of color or extra harmonic saturation to your signal but allow you to get a bunch of clean gain from that signal so that it can be processed however you like later on whether we're using a clean preamp or a colored or character preamp it's important to know the different types that are available they're all ultimately different tools that we can use in our musical setups whether you're performing live or recording in the studio another important thing to consider when choosing your preamp is the type of microphone that you're going to be using with it because different types of microphones output different signal strengths this is something to keep in mind when choosing that preamp so for example a condenser microphone which typically gets power over phantom power is going to output a hotter signal it's more sensitive and it might not need as much gain as a low gain microphone like a shure sm7b for example or an electro voice re 20 would need these types of dynamic microphones are low gain microphones because they need more gain from the preamp the signal coming off of that microphone is a little bit lower so it needs a little bit more help before he can go on to the rest of your signal path consider ribbon microphones as well by their very nature because of how the transducing mechanism works they also output a much lower signal in fact there are preamps that are designed specifically for ribbon microphones to help you get a bunch of gain in a really clean way to preserve the character of the ribbon microphone while also getting you the amount of signal you need for the rest of your path as you can see there's lots of factors to consider when selecting a preamp and we're just starting to scratch the surface so water sales engineers are here to help you pick will talk to you about what's in your setup and what might be the right addition moving forward be sure to like this video if you want to see more like it and leave us a comment below thanks for watching you [Music]

Channel: Sweetwater

Views: 407,737

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Id: 7UGEvcXlRlw

Length: 6min 4sec (364 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019