Saying exactly how much gain a mic needs to function right is absolutly stupid. The Source material makes a difference on the gain needed. Obviously a kick drum will not need as much gain as spoken word. Plus, some people run signals at stupid levels. Most likely you'll be fine. If you need a touch more gain, turn up the makeup on your compressor. I would advise against cranking any gain pot all the way up. You'll start to hear distortion in your mackie amps pretty early on. I'm sure you'll be fine though. The SM7 is a fine mic.

Neil

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You are welcome.

bpatram wrote: Would it be better if I don’t max out the gain and turn up the send level 5-10db+?

Not to nitpick and maybe it's a typo but, you shouldn't have a compressor on an effects send. You should either plug the compressor directly after a preamp and then into your mixer or through your mixer via an insert. Gain should be set at the trim pot and not the fader. If this is just over stating the obvious, just ignore me.

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I think that if you're compressing via an auxilliary bus, you need to invest in 4 more compressers. You're compressor isn't really working at 100%. That is, it's a bit of a compromise. It's fine if you're just going to compress the stereo bus, but then, why not just compress the main stereo bus? I think you would get better use out of your compressor if you were to give it the full signal from the mic pre. Are you working entirely analog or could you make use of a simple daw with plugins? There's plenty of free compresser plugin's (kjaerhaus[sp] comes to mind). If not I would seriously consider investing in 4 more compressers. It's just my opinion however.

Regarding maxing the preamp gain, well, if you are going direct from a preamp into the compressor, you likely won't have to max it out. Just use the comp's make up gain to compensate. Even then you have to be careful because the more gain, the more potential noise you'll introduce.

I'm not sure that turning up the send would be any better than turning up the preamp gain. It may be. Try it. If it's less noisy, great. If not, next idea.

Again, take it all with a grain of salt. It's just my opinion.

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Well if you have all of your mics going to one compresser, you're going to get noise. Any line noise present will be compressed with the active mic even if there is no one using them. Unless of course you turn the faders down or use the mute button. At any rate, you might want to look into a multichannel gate for this purpose (yes, I know. I'm trying to spend your money again). Similar to ducking I suppose but the opposite. So when there's no one speaking on an unused mic, no noise from that mic whatsoever.

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The SM-7B will require a considerable more amount of gain to bring up to the levels of even a 57. You do understand that the 'gain' on a channel is not necessarily the 'slider'......