poor bass string recording - gain solutions?

[speedomansam]

i have a mobilepre which has its own preamp built into it and am using a shure sm57 dynamic mic. when i record, it's hard to get any good gain without distorting the bass strings on the guitar. i'm guessing this could probably be solved with a good preamp, but are there ways to raise the gain with software?

it sounds beautiful with low gain, both high and low strings, i just have to raise the volume really loud for it to be normal. if when the volume's loud it sounds good shouldn't there be a way to simply raise the output signal?

[Pingel]

Where does the distortion occur? If it occurs in your pc (clipping) you should lower the gain, but as high as possible. Then you have to raise the volume of your monitors or headphones.

Remember that the human ear experiences louder sound mostly more beautifully, even if the difference in volume is the only one. But notice that 'gain' and 'volume' are not exactly the same.

And what do you mean with normal? If you compare your recording with any (pop)cd track, you should encounter very large differences in volume, because on the latter, compression and normalising is applied during the mixing/mastering process.

[speedomansam]

hmm, so how do you do all the compression and normalising?

[Pingel]

In general, compression is used to reduce the dynamic range of a sound, in order to let it fit better in the mix. If you're not familiair with compression, do some research. www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com is a good starting point for many technical articles.
There is also another type of compression, called 'limiting'. Then, a high treshold, an infinite (or very high) ratio and fast attack and release are used. The small peaks will be reduced without audible artifacts. As a result, you can make the track louder without clipping.
Keep in mind that you'd better apply limiting in the mastering process.

[dawboxpro]

Go out to ebay and buy yourself a decent compressor/limiter. Also if you want a good hot signal into the soundcard the mobile pre is a bit weak and I have noticed gain issues and clipping when testing it out with just mic's and no compression.

1. Got to have compression
2. A small little pre like the tube MP to boost signal into the soundcard.

Some cards simply do not have enough headroom, or they do not put out a loud enough monitoring sognal and so you turn them up and clip.

Get a good head phone amd as well for $100.

I got a 5 channel one and I have never had monitoring issues after that ever.