Quote:
Originally Posted by Elderly_beginner
I'm very intrigued by your first paragraph. I had not thought about the point that you make, although your explanation makes sense.
I have seen microphones for sale with built-in cable with 1/4" jack on the 'far' end. I wonder how that is used.....
The MG10XU has phantom power on all four XLR ports.
I am planning to use Shure PGA58 Dynamic Cardioid mics, although I'm not sure how to figure out if the MG10XU provides enough preamping. By preamping, do you mean Gain?
Looking at the MG10XU specs, I can't identify the spec that would address preamping of mics, although I admit that I'm a newbie wrt mixers and mics.
Maybe I'm in way over my head in terms of buying a mixer.....
Anyhow, thanks for the help!
Ralph
|
By preamping, I do mean gain, yes.
I think the Yamaha mixer will suit you fine
It's difficult to find exactly how many decibels of amplification/gain you can get, but I assume it may have to do with how you can also boost it with the EQ, maybe the compressor if it has makeup gain, etc. It should be fine.
On audio interfaces, it's usually specified in the specs. For example if you look up the full specs of the Focusrite Clarett+ 8Pre, you will find it says "Gain range: +57dB" on the mic channels. That means the preamp can amplify the signal up +57 db which would be just a little short of what you might want for a Shure SM7B.
The common way to tackle such a problem would be to get a standalone preamp, like the Focusrite ISA One, the Warm Audio WA12 or the Golden Age Pre-73 MKII pictured here:
Here you can see it's a single channel preamp with an XLR input and output on the back and a gain knob that goes all the way up to an impressive +80db on the front. After preamping the SM7B with this, you could send it to a line-in / aux in on another unit like a mixer or audio interface. Thus, standalone preamps like this might let you get more mics into a unit, allowing you to also get mics into line ins.
But this shouldn't
really be relevant for you because buying standalone preamps is expensive and probably not needed in your use-case
I mention it mostly because I thought you might find it educational and interesting.
If you do find you need more mic channels, it's better to get a slightly larger mixer or audio interface.
I think you can imagine the following scenarios:
Recording a band live - you should have more than 4 channels because you might wanna stereo record acoustic guitars (2 channels per instrument), 1 mic for every singer/backup singer, maybe 2 mics for overhead (left/right) and if you have any drums, that's gonna be a lot. Recording bands live requires many channels.
The same band performing a live concert - Requires less channels than recording live because you can get by using instrument jacks for acoustic instruments (helps avoid feedback) and you wouldn't use overheads except maybe for drums. Drums and singers still require a lot of mics.
Recording by overdubbing - Depending on what you're doing, you might get by with as little as 3 mics or even 2, though I'd suggest 3. Something like a large condenser for recording vocals and a pair of pencil mics for stereo recording. This also lets you do setups like mid/side recording. A 4 channel audio interface would go a long way. Unless you have a drum set. Then you need lots more.