Another tech question

[BloodScrollBro]

Travis,
On a previous post (which I can\'t seem to find now) you wrote about the importance of pre-amps. I record with Sonic Foundry Vegas, (an older version, 16-bit) and definitely notice a lack of depth and warmness. (I\'m working on getting the 24-bit upgrade.) I\'ve tried using different compression plug-ins and EQ tweaks but can\'t get the fatness and definition that I\'d like without blowing up the levels. Short of a Neve, (I just don\'t have that kind of $$) is there a compressor or pre-amp you know of that could help? And what is the main difference between a pre-amp and compression anyway? With respect to your time, if there is a book you recommend that explains this stuff I\'ll get that.
If I had known I\'d be so into recording I would\'ve gone to engineering school... It just kind of happened...
Thanks alot for any help.

[Travis]

There is a substantial difference between 16 and 24 bit recording but not near as much as with a good pre-amp or not.  A pre-amp is the amplifier that takes a really small signal that a microphone puts out and boosts it up to a line signal that you can actually hear. The best way to explain a compressor is to know that in the old days before compressors the engineer would sit at the pre amp and when the singer started to sing loud he would turn it down so it didn\'t distort and when the singer got quieter he would turn it back up. A compressor does just that, if it senses the volume of it\'s input going up and  it turns it down. The difference between a limiter and a compressor is just the degree to which the signal is turned down. With a limiter no matter how loud your singer sings the volume will reach a certain point and never get louder, with a compressor you can set a ratio like 2 to 1, if the singer sing twice as loud the output will go up only half as much and so on. The advantage to compression is it can sound more natural than limiting. But for your purposes the pre-amp and in your case the converters your sound card uses  determines  the quality of your sound. The built in mic-pre\'s and converter on those cards are really pretty bad. If your card has an optical digital imput, most do, than a good solution would be something like a Presonus Digimax, a combination of pretty high quality Mic pre-amp and analog to digital converter. There are several of this type thing out there but I happen to think the Presonus stuff sounds pretty good. The whole point is it need to sound good before any plug can really make a big difference. The biggest factors to getting good recordings are, get good sounding instruments, well tuned and in a good acoustic space, then a good player that knows how to use those instruments, then good equipment to record it with and then... an engineer that doesn\'t screw up all the cool stuff .

[BloodScrollBro]

Beautiful. Thanks a mil for the response and your tips. Just checked out the Presonus Digimax and that seems like just the thing I was looking for. I do have the optical input. And the 24-bit upgrade is fast approaching. (Just has to be that way...)
Your point about making it sound good in the first place, before it goes into the board, is well-taken and I\'m religious about that. I don\'t record anything "wet" (I get in to arguements about this with folks... gotta keep it dry and flat on the front-end) and I keep things as clean as possible. You can always deform it later. Mic placement and mic type for different applications -- crucial.
Anyway, thanks again for your as-always-informative answer. I really appreciate the time you take to respond to people here. It\'s great having a "gear-head" of your caliber to bounce things off of, and get info from.