Recording with a preamp

[pulseczar]

This mostly pertains to recording for auditions/competitions, but do you record straight to disk, or have a preamp in your signal chain?

[tubatooter1940]

Straight to disk. I like to add some effects sometimes.
Dennis Gray
tubatooter1940
http://www.myspace.com/johnrenomusic

[Phil Dawson]

I'm not sure that you can record without a pre-amp in the chain somewhere. If you are not using an external one then there is most likely one built into your sound card or CD recorder. You need to have some sort of control over the level going to disc. It could be built in with no control as in a build in limiter.
Good luck, Phil

[pulseczar]

I had external preamps in mind when I started this thread. I was wondering people who've made recordings for auditions/competitions/CDs regularly use external preamps to 'beef up' their sound.

[SplatterTone]

I record to Fostex MR8HD or Fostex MR8 (old model, not MkII) with no extra pre-amp. Then I pull it into Audacity on the computer to edit out dead space and raise the volume level if it is too low. I usually set the level on the low side if I can't be at the console to watch it. You can always make it louder, but a clip is a clip.

Like a previous post said, don't use a mic with bass rolloff like the SM57 and SM58. I was recently recorded with a SM58. The result was all harmonics with the fundamental almost completely gone.

[pulseczar]

Thank you everybody for your replies.

Noren, your idea of recording through the preamp of a bass amp sounds really neat. I think I'll try that tonight.

Here's another question for you recordingphiles/people in the audition circuit/committees.

I was messing around with the effects I have on ProTools (distorted tuba with auto-wah is not meant to be) and when I put the compression on, the sound was significantly better. The dynamics didn't change, but the presence of my sound definitely improved.


So my question is, would compression be okay to use on an audition tape?