Using external preamp on recorded vocal track with Logic.

Hi guys,

Just checking on how I could use an external preamp on a recorded vocal track with Logic.I use the Apogee Duet USB interface & would like to use my Universal Audio Twin 710 preamp on this vocal track that had been poorly recorded.Is it as simple as taking the output of the Duet, send it through the preamp & then route it into the input of Duet & record on a different track? Will there be a latency issue? Not sure how to go about.Any tips would help.Thanks.

Running it thru the UA710 won't make that much of a difference if the vocal was poorly recorded.

If it's just a loudness thing you can add a gain plugin, and add the Vintage Console EQ and some compression.

what triplet said.

Opinions my vary, but regarding technical quality of the recording, priority goes like this:

Room > Placement > Mic selection > preamp selection > converters

and of course #1 anywhere is performance.

you'd be affecting a fraction of the sound with preamp compared to the room or mic placement.

Thanks guys.The recording was done using a cheap mic so I thought that rerouting it through the preamp might help.I have Izotope plugins so maybe that would help.

Either way do let me know how I should route a track through external effects ,be it vocal or guitar track, using Apogee Duet. Thanks.

The Duet has only 2 outputs, which makes it difficult to route to external hardware and back in, since you will loose your monitor signal.

Be careful with creating a feedback loop, so keep the volume and gain low, just in case.

Connect to external effect using XLR or TRS, whatever is needed.

Take output of external effect and come back into Duet using Line in with Maestro app.

You probably will have to test how to monitor this with headphones in the Maestro app as well.

Maybe you won't be able to, that's the limitation of just 2 outputs on an interface.

First, nothing can be done to restore what hasn't been recorded in the first place.

To set up an external effects loop, there's two ways, provided you have the actual ins and outs necessary for this.

You can use the IO plugin in a track or aux. There you can set the destination output (3 or 4 or both) and the return input ( 1 or 2 or both). There's also a Ping button which lets you teach Logic the latency of that fx loop so it will send stuff there early to compensate. However, this confines you to realtime playback and bounce.

You can instead route a track, aux or send directly to outputs 3-4 and record inputs 1-2 on a new track. While this does not give you the Ping option to compensate for latelny, you can manually align the recorded track to its source (and set up a negative track delay with the found values for future fx prints). But then, you should not overthink this unless it becomes noticeable. A vocal track that's 2 ms out of sync is arguably inditinguishable from the original, and literally no one will care if the reverb predelay is 53 or 55 ms.It will become an issue when trying parallel processing, though.

First, nothing can be done to restore what hasn't been recorded in the first place.

 

To set up an external effects loop, there's two ways, provided you have the actual ins and outs necessary for this.

 

You can use the IO plugin in a track or aux. There you can set the destination output (3 or 4 or both) and the return input ( 1 or 2 or both). There's also a Ping button which lets you teach Logic the latency of that fx loop so it will send stuff there early to compensate. However, this confines you to realtime playback and bounce.

 

You can instead route a track, aux or send directly to outputs 3-4 and record inputs 1-2 on a new track. While this does not give you the Ping option to compensate for latelny, you can manually align the recorded track to its source (and set up a negative track delay with the found values for future fx prints). But then, you should not overthink this unless it becomes noticeable. A vocal track that's 2 ms out of sync is arguably inditinguishable from the original, and literally no one will care if the reverb predelay is 53 or 55 ms.It will become an issue when trying parallel processing, though.

Thanks a lot.Will give it a try.Pls let me know where & how I can access the Ping button.

It's in the I/O plugin.

Thanks