Pre-amp?

[mmorrison]

Dear Collective Wisdom,

I've got an MXL-DRK condenser microphone, which I've got plugged into the line-in port (no, not the headphone port, the one to the left of that) on my Mac PowerBook G4 running OSX 10.4.11. I'm getting a signal when I turn the mic on and speak into it, but the signal seems very low if going by the waveform display as it records. Just a mere jiggle up and down from a straight line. Does this mean I'm going to need a pre-amp between the mic and my laptop? Or am I just missing a setting somewhere? Thanks in advance for any advice,

M Morrison
in Salem, Massachusetts

[kozikowski]

The little circle with two black arrows pointing in is the "Line-In" of your Mac. It's stereo and "high level" suitable for connection to the output of a sound mixer, an audio or video tape player, a CD Player.....or a microphone preamplifier. Past the arithmetic and engineering, the microphone signal is 200 to as much as 1000 times lower than the computer is expecting. That explains the really tiny signal. You can try to bring it up with Effect > Amplify, and it might be interesting to see what happens if you do that, but yes, for best results, you do need a dedicated amplifier, a MicPre.

Two ways to go. I have captured a number of high quality productions with a good microphone, a sound mixer, and my Mac Line-In. That's not the cheap way to go, though. That can run into serious money. For the budget minded, one of the USB MicPres on the market will do nicely. Behringer makes a number of nice units. Search the forum for part numbers. Those don't use the Line-In connection. They send the signal as a digital bitstream down the USB connection.

Koz

[steve]

Behringer makes a number of nice units.

Also "ART" pre-amps have been recommended.