Advice on a channel strip for mono voice

[David MacNeill]

I thought it odd that as we were recording, we had to dime the MBox's preamp volume just to get the meter to hover around the middle of the range. That's likely where the noise is coming from -- the preamp is all the way up and thus boosting the noise floor. That's why I thought a good channel strip with a hint of compression in front on the chain would gain stage the voice properly. I wouldn't be pushing the MBox pre so hard.

Our voice talent has a strong voice, and she's about 8 inches from the Stedman as she reads, so there shold be plenty of original gain for the system to work with. Could I have a bad cable? My experience with KSM44 is that it's very sensitive, and I have the pad turned off but the low pass engaged.

[allstaar]

Could be a bad cable, bad mic, even bad Mbox.

Either way, you really shouldn't need to turn the gain up that much with a microphone like the KSM and the talent speaking as close as you describe.

I would suggest that you do your best to troubleshoot the components you have already before considering buying anything else as I'm fairly convinced from reading your posts that something is not working properly.

[andretti]

Some Presonus stuff is made in the USA. Not all.

My bad. I read this in one of their press releases...

"PreSonus manufactures all its sets and components in the heart of Baton Rouge on Florida Boulevard at Bon Carr. The company employs 53 people, including Los Angeles-based design engineer George Radda and vice president of engineering Brian Smith.

The company imports raw materials to its Florida Boulevard facility. Using a combination of robotic machines and a team of mostly Vietnamese assemblers who solder under giant magnifying glasses, they manufacture the boards and circuits, then the completed boxes."

...I guess I just took them at their word.

[tele_player]

That's not from a press release, it's from an article in 'Greater Baton Rouge Business Report', and that detail (made in USA) is contradicted in several other articles on the web.

Quotes from Jim Odom (founder, owner PreSonus) in TapeOp May/June 2005:

"We do a lot of assembly here, but we do some work overseas..."
"the lower-end products will be assembled over there..." "...we use one very small factory in Taiwan..."

I've obviously taken excerpts, but I don't think I changed the meaning.

I wish more stuff was made here in the USA, and I mean that in all businesses, not just audio gear. But that's not the way the modern world works.

[David MacNeill]

I'm going to test each cable and component in the chain. Assuming I find the culprit that's causing the gain issue and its resulting noise, is it reasonable for me to tell my partners in the audiobook company that investing in the Presonus with the SPDIF option will give us noticably superior results compared to using the MBox pre and the Digidesign Compressor plugin, all other things being equal?

[C52382P]

Better gear sounds better. But make sure you guys do some reading. Make sure you understand exactly what it is that a compressor does before you attempt to use it. Not talking down to you ...just make sure you have a basic understanding of what youre doing before you do it. Id rather not use actual demos for clients as my trial and error for learning how to use my gear.