The Pre-amps on MBox is amazing

[J. Guerrero]

I read in a review that the Mbox pres are based on Focusrite's Green Range pres. Maybe that's why they have a nice quality. I said it before -and other people too: they sound better than the 001's mic pres.

[The Electric Trombone]

Thanks for the opinion there. I have been considering MBOX/iBook500 Mhz combo as a portable rig. A lot of my paid business is me taking my 001 rig to folks' gigs, and its a LOT to haul around for just that, but its the main source of my "recording income". A few more gigs and I should be able to afford this set-up. I've been searching the DUC for iBook 500 Mhz performance, but haven't got to do much MBOX reading yet. What sort of sources do you record ? I'm curious as to what you are recording through these pre's.

Thanks !

[J. Guerrero]

Dan, I've recorded voice and keyboards for a guy's demo CD and for radio spots. I've had excellent results.
I have the exact same setup that you want to buy, but I had to add 256MB of RAM to get the most out of it. I made some testing to see how far this rig can go and I got a total of 17 audio tracks (all tracks had different 30 sec. audio files for each one of them), one stereo master fader and 38 RTAS plugins active (Eqs, Compressors and Dither, the basics) at the time of playback. This means that you can easely get a 24 track session if you handle the right way your plug in processes. As for memory allocation, 100MB for DAE and 100MB for Pro Tools. Above that, there is no improvement in performance.
If you have more questions, shoot!

[postaldog]

I've been experimenting with preamps and for those who wonder what the pre-amps on the Mbox sounds like, it's amazing.

First off, compared to the level I was getting from a Grace Design 101 I think it was, the Pre-amp on the MBox has waaay higher gain. Probably because it goes straight to digital with its built in phantom power. I also have a Joemeek 3 and combined with Antares AVP, the signal still wasn't that good. I was using Audiomedia III and Echo soundcards on a Mac G4.

If you've had problems with low signals being recorded into the digital world. Search no more. Mbox is truly a bargain. I tried using it with my Cubase 5.1 and it works just as well.