Direct A/D setup comparison

gtempleton

gtempleton

Audiophyte
Hi guys, I'm newly trying to record better audio and I have a question for you all. I record v/o for narration and my current setup is a Sennheiser MKH-416 into a Sound Devices MixPre3-ii. I'm quite happy with the clean audio I get out of it. In editing, I run this through Premiere's built-in software AutoGate, compressor, and parametric EQ.

My question is this: If I were to go from this pure mic->preamp->DAC chain to a chain with analog effects, say mic->discreet-preamp->analog-compressor->analog-EQ->DAC, what sort of real-world quality increase could I expect? That's assuming I'd set the software and hardware comp/EQ to the same settings.

And/or, if it's easier, how much would I have to spend on, say, a channel strip to be able to hear an audible increase in quality with digital-to-analog move?

Thanks in advance guys! Seems you have a nice forum, here.
 
S

shadyJ

Speaker of the House
Staff member
I don't think you would really see much if any improvement by going with outboard analog effect processing. You would actually lose flexibility. The algorithms used in software effects processors are so good that it makes outboard effects processors a waste of space. There are some situations where it makes sense to get outboard effects processors, but your situation doesn't look like one of them.
 

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