kaukongfungpooey wrote: If I were to purchase a decent Mic PreAmp, for example the Blue Robbie (http://www.bluemic.com/robbie/), and used the line output from that to go to my pc's line input, would the audio quality still be affected by the pc because it's going through the soundcard?

Yes. The soundcard input will most likely be worse than the MAudio. You could put a $10,000 preamp through it, and the soundcard would still be the weakest link.

What did you realize about the preamps with the new headphones?

How do you know the problem isn't that it's actually the microphone that isn't quite suitable for your particular application? Have you tried another mic? Are you setting your gain chain correctly? Is the software track recording/playback levels too high/low, and/or the MAudio set too high/low? Is your level for monitoring set too high/low because a different level is set incorrectly?

What I'm getting at is that maybe you really never did have everything set ideally, and it just became much more apparent with the headphones?

Kapt.Krunch

Right now my setup is mainly for song writing so I only use two mics and a PC. My experience has been the same. The headphone monitor of the Fast Track pro, for me, is not that great. Actually, I've been using an old Tascam 4 track cassette deck for a headphone amp and I can blow my brains out on that if I desire. For not that much money I have had great results with a PreSonus Blue Tube mic pre and the Fast Track using an AT4033a. Also using a tiny little $200 Mackie mixer to route to the Fast Track and cassette deck for headphones. Of course, I am totally unfamiliar with the ways of the digital audio world being a dinosaur steeped in the old Ampex world, splicing tapes, and turning on tube amps. Geesh, I miss that! But, I am pretty sure the Fast Track beats the hell out of your PC soundcard!

Hey, thanks for getting back to me.
I've tried a few different mics in the past, most recently the AKG C 3000 B - thought it sounded awful and so got the Blue Bluebird, which sounded so much better to me.
The thing I noticed with the preamps, more so with the headphone amp, is that it doesn't seem to have much power. If I have the level turned up full, it still sounds exactly the same, and at the same volume, as when the headphones are plugged directly into my PC's headphone jack.
However I can still hear much more detail of sound than with my old headphones, which led me to notice the quality of recording from the mic preamp... I just feel like I could do better if I spent a bit more cash, and dropped to a single mic input device...
I know what you mean with setting all the levels correctly, and to be honest I probably don't have them ideally set...
So if I were to get a decent mic preamp, what else would I need to be able to connect it to my pc without going through the soundcard?
A decent DAW that would connect via firewire or usb?

Hey ArthurBod.
So just to clarify - you use a mic preamp and then take that through the fast track pro? and you found the results good?
I was thinking that if I used a mic preamp then took it through the fast track pro, it wouldnt do any good because the recording would be going through two seperate amps before reaching the pc?