pushin tubes

easy people, just got a tube pre amp and been pushin vocals pretty hard through it but when i get in the red i get clicks and pops (was confused as i associated this with digital clipping and its a FULLY analogue unit) of course i am not ruling out that i am mis-informed as it has happened b4. Let me know how far you guys push tube hardware for creative effect, was particularly curious about its use on drums as i got about 40 records ready to sample and wanna get em in as crisp as possible, obviously runnin hot into my 2kxl just a smidge below clipping, thanks in advance, peace

just got a tube pre amp

Which one?

when i get in the red i get clicks and pops

Never heard of that either. How red is your red??? Not every 'tube' preamp is a tube preamp. Many of them have IC input/output/gain stages and a tube added for flavor (the cheap ones) or a tube gain stage surrounded by IC input/output (a lot of the mid-priced units)... ICs can have nasty clipping, true tube amps handle clipping very gracefully (and cost an arm and a leg...).

Or maybe something else down the chain is clipping? What else do you have between your preamp and your monitors/speakers? Mixer? DAW? soundcard? When you drive one device hard in the signal chain, you have to make sure that the device(s) that comes after it are prepared/designed to accept a hot signal. That's called gain staging.

thanks for the informative post, i am aware of most of what you have stated. My chain goes deck>dj mixer>mixing desk>pre amp>mpc. Only reason i really got the pre in the chain is because the gain on both mixers is near unusable as it is hella noisy and sounds 'brittle' if you know what i mean. Using a cheap 'hybrid' pre, its the art tube mp and i know it also is not great but is a vast improvement on the gain of my mixers, thanks for help anyway. The pre works great as a bass DI though! Edit: when recording vocals my chain was slightly different: mic>pre>mixer>daw

i run signals in so that the lowest passages typically hit 0db and try to keep the loudest peaks JUST below +6db (i think) levels aren't best represented on the art mp but i never clip any other device and am usually running a low signal out of mixers, very high pre input, moderatly high pre out and very low mpc in, as my pre tends to compensate and keep levels just below the clip level on the sample screen

My advice would be to run your mixers at unity gain, and pad down the signal before it gets to the preamp (or don't add any gain in the preamp). Your TT mixer should put out a line level signal, so in reality you don't really need any more gain between it and your MPC.

Also, take your main mixer out of the recording chain if you can (unless its a great sounding mixer). Either go:

tt -> dj mixer (at unity gain) -> preamp (low/no gain) -> mpc (no gain)

or:

tt -> dj mixer (at unity gain) -> mpc (no gain) -> preamp (low/no gain)

Once you get a clean signal thru the chain, then you can play with various levels to get different flavoring. But you have to be able to get a clean signal before you can get a slightly overdriven signal.

Also doublecheck and make sure your tt is plugged into the RIAA input of the dj mixer.

thanks for the info boss, never djed so always lacked a bit of knowledge with decks, gonna give your first set up suggestion a go once i get an adapter to take my dj mixers out from a rca to a trs

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