Afew things I'm wondering about. I'd really appreciate a little help on
this!

I'm thinking of selling my focusrite voicemaster because I don't use
any of the effects on it (they sound horrible) so I figured I could
replace it with a better pre amp. I'd buy just a pre with no effects,
so I could get a better sound for the money. I wouldn't mind having a
compressor, but I can use software for now.

Here's the thing...

I've just bought an Edirol FA-66 firewire soundcard that I plug my mic
into. It has xlr inputs and phantom power so I can run my mic straight
through that, and don't need my voicemaster pre.

The FA-66 isn't exactly top range, and I'm wondering, if I was to buy a
decent pre amp one day, would I not still be limited by my FA-66? Or
would there still be a very noticable difference using a good pre amp
paired up my FA-66, rather than just my FA-66 alone?

I haven't actually tried using my voicemaster and FA-66 together yet,
which I probably should have done before asking you guys this question.
But I would value your opinions.

Cheers guys,

Leon.

In article . com writes:

The FA-66 isn't exactly top range, and I'm wondering, if I was to buy a
decent pre amp one day, would I not still be limited by my FA-66? Or
would there still be a very noticable difference using a good pre amp
paired up my FA-66, rather than just my FA-66 alone?

I haven't actually tried using my voicemaster and FA-66 together yet,
which I probably should have done before asking you guys this question.
But I would value your opinions.

Well, of course you should, to investigate the possibility, learn how
things connect to it, and learn how your mics respond to different
inputs. Any time you combine functions (in the case of your Edirol
interface, a mic preamp and an A/D converter) and lower the price,
usually the functions suffer about equally. You won't find a crummy
mic preamp married to a decent A/D converter or a greap mic preamp
cobined with a poorly designed or implemented A/D converter. There are
some exceptions of course, but it's usually because one functional
block is unusually poor - the Nomad Jukebox 3 is a good example, with
its usable line input/A/D and totally useless mic input function.

So adding a vintage Neve preamp to your FA-66 won't be quite as
effective as a vintage Neve preamp attached to a Lavry A/D converter
interfaced to your computer through a decent digital I/O card. But it
will sound different (probalby in a good way) from the built-in mic
preamp.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

wrote:
Afew things I'm wondering about. I'd really appreciate a little help on
this!
snip
The FA-66 isn't exactly top range, and I'm wondering, if I was to buy a
decent pre amp one day, would I not still be limited by my FA-66? Or
would there still be a very noticable difference using a good pre amp
paired up my FA-66, rather than just my FA-66 alone?


Leon.


You should only be limited by the AD of the edirol, not the mic pre.
All links are important, but I reckon the Edirol will sound pretty good
as a "budget" AD.
How do you like the FA66 by the way??

Hey guys, thanks for the replies. And Mike, it seems like you reply to
most questions here. Nice one!

I don't know much about A/D converters, but the FA66's sample rate can
go up to 192kHz if I really felt the need. I don't suppose this is the
only feature that makes it good/bad though? Guess this is where
technical knowledge takes over ;-)

The FA66 seems pretty cool. I bought it to use with our new PC, and
didn't fancy putting my old Audigy 2 in it and making it look ugly.
Besides, the Audigy 2 is pretty average I think. More of a 'multi
purpose' card and it's messy. I like the fact that the FA66 is a
firewire external device, and it has a couple of mic inputs so I can
mess around with stereo miking easilly.

I wish I could tell you more about it, but as yet, I haven't installed
Logic on the new PC so can't give you any feedback about how it
performs in Logic. I'm guessing it should all run pretty smooth though.

It sounds good to my ears.

Cheers,

Leon.