Hello,
I have been using the UR22 for several years. I use it for vocals with a Rode condenser mic plugged in, on phantom power. For the last year I have been doing voice-over work using a Behringer XM8500 but here’s the problem: Being a dynamic mic I have to turn the gain up to about 90%. No surprise there, but once the audio is recorded into Cubase it’s still incredibly low. The waveform is barely visible. I have to boost it +15db by dragging it up with the mouse cursor and then I add some EQ/FX and I have to finally boost up the master bus a little bit to get to the level I need.
This method doesn’t make me feel like I’m getting as clean a file as I should be. I have tried using a Rode Procaster at 8 times the price of the XM8500 and have to do the same steps to get the level up sufficiently and get no significant improvement in voice quality. I almost bought a cheap mic-preamp this week to put between the mic and the UR22 but I’ve been reading that the UR22’s internal preamp is generally better than any <$100 stand alone mic preamp. So, I don’t see how running a preamp into a preamp will improve anything versus just running high gain on the UR22 and boosting it in Cubase.
Can anyone here advise? I feel as if I am doing this wrong.