Recording Without Pres

[|-<>-|]

Hi, A friend of mine who is a great FOH engineer but really has little experience of recording. He has given me a HD24 Disk to convert the tracks from the proprietary format to normal Wav files.

Well i have not listened to the recording yet but he told me that rather than take the direct outs from the Desk he used splitters to split the mic lines and recorded them without pre's or anything else.

I presume that the recoding will be crap but it got me thinking, how do digital multicores work? are their preamps in the multi that are controlled from the digital desks that are attached to them. stuff like EtherSound. it converts for analogue to digital with no pre amps.

so the question is do we need preamps to record?

[bishopthomas]

There are snake systems with remote preamps, controlled by a digital console. Many systems are proprietary to the console manufacturer. Hopefully he used preamps somewhere in the signal chain if using microphones. Converting the files is pretty simple. The files are wavs anyway, but in a different file format. Using the Alesis Fireport makes it simple to transfer to a PC; just connect, open the software, and select your files. Let us know how it turns out.

[Remoteness]

There's not enough information to compute what you're saying...

I got the great FOH engineerthat has little experience of recording part.
I believe you mean he gave you a HD24 hard disk to convert.
The Alesis Fireport and third party software iis the way to transfer the files properly.

But, recording without preamps is nonsense.
Unless he used active splitters to split the mic lines to the recorder.
Active splitters like XTA and BSS have enough juice to drive the recorder's input.

Now, you mention digital multicores so, I assume it's a digital console.
If that's the case anything goes depending on the desk he used.

Lay us on some more information so we can understand your situation better.

In any event you need mic pres or an AD of some sort to record to a line level recorder like the HD24.

You must have misunderstood what your friend was telling you.

[|-<>-|]

hi thanks for the replies,

i didnt think that my post was that unclear.

I know how to convert fro the HD24 to Wav, its trivial. what i was wondering is whether recording without pres is possible.

I was citing the example of a digital multi as being an adc using mic level rather than line level to drive its adc and thinking that if it works for the multi it would work for the hd recorder to the same extent. is this not the case or does a digital multi have a built in gain circuit?

I presume he would have used active splitters when doing the recording, i was not aware that using active splitters would give more signal to the recorder. I thought the reason for using active splitters is transformer based isolation.

Thanks anyway.

|-<>-|

[Remoteness]

I cannot speak for anyone else, but your posts are a bit disconnected.
But, that could be me since I don't always read between the lines.

Do you know which console your buddy used? That would tell us a lot.

What kind of digital multi are you considering with your example? AES, MADI, etc, etc...
Depending on the system you could have mic or line level preamps at the head end.

Any way you look at it you will always need a preamp to boost the microphone signal.

You did not specify so I was just suggesting the active splitters as a possibility.
Active splitters do have additional gain and some can boost or cut that level.
A passive splitter has no gain and if it uses a transformer you loose around 3dB of gain since the XFMR knocks it down a bit.

Passive and active splitters may or may not have isolation transformers in them.
It depends on how you order (or build) the splitters.

You will always need a preamplifier unless the mics put out line level signal.