RecordingN00b wrote: just turn the gain down on the board, and up on the outboard pre?

That's yur answer

I seem to remember trying to turn the board's gain down to 0 with a preamp before it, and no sound was coming through? I'll have to try it again

I would recommend just going straight from the mic pre to your DAW and EQ by experimenting with mic placement.

For those times where you're just using the single or dual channel pre's you'll loose a lot of clarity and important mid freqs by tainting the signal with any board at all. The fact that it's a Behringer means nothing so I'm not bagging on the board.

Seriously, try EQ'ing by placing the mic at different distances, angles and by mic'ing at different places along the body of the instrument itself.

You might be surprised how the difference of just an inch or two in mic placement will render the sound of a completely different microphone. But the sound you get from a mixing board will typically always be the same sound.

Just my opinion.

RecordingN00b wrote: I seem to remember trying to turn the board's gain down to 0 with a preamp before it, and no sound was coming through? I'll have to try it again

I do it the same way, on my little 16 track mixer. I just turn the "trim" pot til it's "all the way down"
And then raise the input and output gains on the outboard preamp til it's sounds great.

Listen to CoyoteTrax, he's got it! Doesn't your board have inserts!?!? The way you guys are doing this still passes the audio through the far inferior Behringer circuitry... just because you turn the pre gain down on the Behringer doesn't mean you're bypassing the opamps and gain structuring that the board's doing to the signal (in this case = bad!!)... either use your insert jacks or find a way to get into the recorder w/out using the Behringer... I'm sure you'll find your pres sound even better that way!! Just mix with the Behringer, don't track unless you have to. Just my opinion, but that's what I've learned is "better"...

The way I read the schematics on the small format Behri's there's no way to get around channeling the signal path out through 5850 (?) opamps, so you always end up with that same "color", or "sound".

It's just that if you have an outboard mic pre there's no "reason" to have the board in the signal path unless you intentionally want the sound of the board in your signal.