My Mbox 2 pre's are way noisy. Its all garbage noise under 20Hz though. Sounds very decent with frequencies below that nuked. Use a high pass filter in your chain to eliminate that. It will free up headroom and you plug ins wont trip out because they see VU's moving when there is no audio. If your recording this digitally your going to have to get the music into the box somehow and on the mbox 2 i experience the same sound quality between the DI's, line and mic ins. they all were pretty noisy below 20hz. I cant say this is whats up with yours but give the filter a try and if that doesn't do the trick to at least bring it up to beringer quality
. i think your money would be better spent on a different interface. The other issue you may run into trying to record a whole album on an MBOX 2 is you have no comfort effects like reverb/ chorus or delay without significant latency. I would not spend $1000 on a mic when recording on an mbox 2. I also would not buy another pre for an mbox 2. If your considering those things at least move up to an mbox2pro. but I would also find it very difficult to record an entire album with 0 verb in my ear. just my 2 cents.