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I was wondering what you all thought of this setup? (This is the gear I am stuck with, I don't have a budget - i just wanna know if I'm doing things right)

I am planning on recording drums with 3 tracks, 1 per microphone

1 SM57 located at the bass drum -----> Preamp input 1
1 SM57 located at the snare > Preamp preamp input 2
1 RODE Nt2 condenser located on top of the drumset -> Tube Preamp> Line in 1

My reasoning behind putting the condenser mic through the tube preamp and line in is that I am assuming the the external tube preamp is better than the one on the m audio.

I have a question however, I am new at this and am not too sure about the "line in" inputs. Do I have any chances of damaging the input by running a condenser mic with phantom power in the line in? Can the signal be too strong?

(sorry if this is a stupid question, I just couldnt find the answer on google)

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Boswell Wed, 04/14/2010 - 02:24

I think you mean "Line in 3" and not "Line in 1" for connecting the ART pre-amp. The ART may overload the input of the 610 if you turn it up too far, but you won't damage anything. The 610 will have no knowledge of what is plugged into the input of the ART pre-amp, so is not affected by the NT2 or its phantom power.

RemyRAD Wed, 04/14/2010 - 23:23

You might do yourself a cool favor by utilizing your condenser microphone on the bass drum. The two SM57's you can run as low overheads left & right. You'll get yourself a great sounding stereo drum kit that way instead of mono. You're recording not doing PA. So for recording your microphones don't have to be positioned as they would be for PA. And 57's can make for fine sounding overheads catching a lot of the drums tone and your cymbals. This is what you do when you want stereo drums. I've known lots of guys who used Neumann FET 47's on bass drum. What you've got there is something similar. You may need to engage the microphones pad switch. And the tube saturation will work well for this application. 57's have plenty of high end for cymbals. I've done this plenty of times. It works and works well.

I love drums
Mx. Remy Ann David

Guitarfreak Thu, 04/15/2010 - 09:50

I forsee a potential problem. That m-audio interface you listed speaks to the computer via firewire. In order to record this to a DAW software program, you need to tell the program to listen in on that firewire channel. Your line-in connection is going to be flapping in the breeze and not recording anything because DAW's have ADD and they can only listen to one thing at a time. Also line-in is leaving the digital conversion to your computer's stock sound card, this will sound horrible, you are better off not using it at all. The only solution is more channels of digital conversion. Look for a used PreSonus Firepod on ebay or craigslist or something, they are discontinued so they should be relatively decent price. Great unit too, you'll never need an upgrade unless you decide to go pro.

Remy's idea of the 57's as a stereo pair above the set is good advice. I think that instead of the condenser though, maybe you should look into a decent kick drum mic or another 57 or two. A used PreSonus Firepod and 4 SM57's will take you much farther down the road to a good demo than the frankenstein setup in your original post.

Just some things to think about.

TheJackAttack Thu, 04/15/2010 - 10:17

GF-The PF610 will record both the front XLR jacks as channels 1 & 2 and then the rear line TRS jacks are 3 & 4. He'll be able to grab all four at a time via the firewire. He'll still have to assign the proper channels inputs in his DAW. Basically you'd be correct if the OP hadn't mistyped by labeling the ART MP channel as line 1 instead of the actual line 3.

Guitarfreak Thu, 04/15/2010 - 10:24

TheJackAttack, post: 345897 wrote: GF-The PF610 will record both the front XLR jacks as channels 1 & 2 and then the rear line TRS jacks are 3 & 4. He'll be able to grab all four at a time via the firewire. He'll still have to assign the proper channels inputs in his DAW. Basically you'd be correct if the OP hadn't mistyped by labeling the ART MP channel as line 1 instead of the actual line 3.

Ahh, indeed. I thought he was going to use his computer's line in. Even with that, I don't think that NT-2 will do him much good at this point. If he had two of them yes, but a single one... well I'd rather have a different mic myself, but different strokes.

Also OP, where did you make that picture? I see many people with those, but I've never found out how to do it myself.