Discuss BlueTube and BlueTube DP (1st Gen), Eureka, DigiTube, TubePre, M80, MP20
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I just bought a BlueTube PreAMP for a small in-home studio hoping for quality acoustic guitar and vocal recording. Pretty new to the recording thing.. Looks like I need the Audio Box now too in order to actually record. I have Adobe Audition Software and seems pretty good. I also have an old M-Box.. Did I make a mistake buying the BlueTube? Do I need to sell that and buy the AudioBox now - or is it worth having both? Hoping for some insight here. Sorry if I am asking a dumb question - like I said pretty new to all this..
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by mwright137 on Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:13 pm
Depends on what you want. The AudioBox is all you need to record. The BlueTube will give you that nice warm tube sound, but is not an interface itself.

I have the 2 channel BlueTube and an AudioBox.

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by cristofe on Thu Oct 23, 2014 7:53 am
I have Adobe Audition Software and seems pretty good. I also have an old M-Box.. Did I make a mistake buying the BlueTube?


The M-Box probably won't work with Audition. AFAIK older M-Box's are specific to Pro-Tools.
Audition is ok but it's more geared towards radio broadcasting and post production. If you
buy an AudioBox a big plus is that it comes with Studio One which, IMHO, is a much better
program for the type of recording you want to do. :mrgreen:

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by christopherwiggins on Thu Oct 23, 2014 11:26 am
Thanks for the input guys - I actually have been able to bypass the ProTools software and use M-Box as a stand alone recorder. Works fine for Voice-Over work but not so good for acoustic guitar. I tried to get the BlueTube to work with the M-Box with no luck. Think I will buy the AudioBox.
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by alexeinguyen on Mon Dec 08, 2014 9:53 pm
It actually depends on your demand. The audiobox is to record what you need, and the bluetube will give you warm tube sound, but the record quality is not very good
Last edited by alexeinguyen on Sun Jan 04, 2015 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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by PAE_Perry on Wed Dec 10, 2014 2:08 pm
Hi Christopher,

I read through this thread and noticed your last post about not being able to get our BlueTube to work with your MBox 2 interface.

Not sure what the reason was, but a few things to keep in mind:

The output of the BlueTube (like most preamp units) is line-level. Most USB or Firewire audio interfaces such as the MBox 2 or our AudioBox USB unit are designed to accept a range of input signal level sources from the weakest (Mic) to hottest (Line) and in-between (Instrument-- that is, the passive electric guitar/bass pickup output signal.

A key to using a line-level output preamp device *before* the audio interface that will convert your audio signal to digital and pass it into your host recording computer system via USB or Firewire is that you need to make sure that the input is set to Line-Level for proper gain matching.

You may need to attenuate (turn down) the master output of the BlueTube or alternately "pad" (soften/lower) the input at the audio interface, to reduce the potential of audio clipping/distortion of the signal. Perhaps this might've been what you meant by "not being able to get it to work"?

It was already explained previously, but the job of a preamp is to provide a stage of audio signal gain for Mic or Instrument signals. Preamps that have a tube in the circuit generally add color or "warmth" to the signal, as this is a characteristic of what a preamp vacuum tube will do. This is a whole discussion subject onto itself... here's a good article from our friends at Unique Squared to get you more informed in case you're interested: http://www.uniquesquared.com/blog/4887/ ... -need-one/

Most audio interfaces typically have a non-tube input circuit for "flat" signal response. In layman's terms, many recording enthusiasts start with a basic audio interface to "get the job done" until they decide to investigate playing with the quality of the mics they own via investing into preamps.

A good analogy from a guitar player's perspective (hopefully this will make sense to you... not sure if you play guitar) would be: most players start with an acoustic. Perhaps they might choose to explore the electric guitar at some point to widen their sound palatte. This then introduces using an amplifier (which already is a tone coloration device). Then, effect pedals may become added to the sonic exploration process.

So, in the end, you'd mic an acoustic guitar and get that mic signal into an audio interface to convert to digital for your computer recording software to record said signal.

But if you reach over for an electric guitar and plug it into an amp, you'd still probably mic the amp. However, the while you're still playing a guitar, the tone is definitely a change from the acoustic guitar.

A tube preamp will alter the sound of a basic mic or instrument further before this sound is introduced to the audio interface, whose job again is simply to convert the analog signal to digital and stream it at a high of a resolution as the hardware unit was designed to (this varies with cost) into your computer system to be recorded.

I hope this helped you understand a bit better.

Thanks for your interest in our gear and asking! Happy holidays.

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