How can I add mic pre's to my mbox 2?

[TheArch]

So for the past year I have been doing a lot of electronic stuff with my mbox 2 which worked out great with just the two mic pre's but now I want to start recording live drums and such, what can I do? (besides overheads and buying an HD rig) I need more mic pre's

[sw rec]

If you mean more INPUTS you'll want to seriously think about upgrading to an 003 or 003 RACK. You can PRE-mix down to 2 channels, but then you're stuck with whatever you sent in. So you don't need an HD rig...even a used 002 would give you up to 18 inputs.

[TheArch]

Yes, but only 4 mic pre's I dont need all those DI inputs or Line inputs. I am trying to record a drum set. How can I do that with all those DI inputs or Line inputs?

[sw rec]

003 rack-factory has 8 mic pre's
OR an 002r (they're all over Ebay these days) with a Behringer ada8000, using the adat out into the optical in on the 002r gives you 8 mic pres, in addition to the 4 on the 002.
I have one, it works.

[TheArch]

Yea on the rack+ractory there is which would be great to have but money is an issue. So there is no way to could do that with an mbox correct?

[sw rec]

Right, you're going to get 2 inputs on the M box. Period.

[jmitchell1532]

Even if you hooked up an external mixer with a bunch of xlrs to mic the drums, they'd still feed into the L/R of the MBox, creating 1 stereo channel.

[TOM@METRO]

A used 002 is well worth the money. You can find preamps very inexpensively if you don't need AD converters.

[albee1952]

Ditto. A used 002 with a Behringer ADA8000 is a very cost-effective setup that would give you 12 mic preamps plus 4 line inputs(take some audio off the live PA mixer?) Whenever anyone asks about which interface they should buy, the first question I ask is; are you planning on recording drums? If the answer is YES, then Mbox is NOT a consideration. You can certainly recoup some cash by selling the Mbox to offset the expense. Used 002racks can be found for under $500 and another $200 for the ADA8000. OR, you could rent a 24 track hard disc recorder(Tascam or Alesis) for the live tracking and import the audio into Pro Tools and mix/edit with your Mbox2.