some day one bullshit

[GoatKnuckles]

I have a presonus firepod.....I just purchased a sytek MPA4 and i'm getting a ART pro vla "tube" compressor from some stuff I sold and traded. I'm wondering how to go about hooking these up to my firepod or rather the best way to do so.

to my knowledge the sytek ONLY has XLR male and female connections for the ins and outs. i'm not sure what is on the ART compressor.

I'm not really sure how to hook any of this up but I assume i'm going to need some kinda patchbay setup?

my original plan was to just run a 4 channel xlr male to female snake from the outs of the sytek into 4 ins on my firepod but I would imagine there would be a better way. So if someone could tell me what I need to buy in order to run all this together that would be amazing, i'm trying to start tracking as soon as possible so please let me know.

[markmeat]

Ideally the Firepod would have line-ins on 3-4 as well as 1-2... runnign through the front though with all four channels turned down to zero will do it for you, though... are you looking to run the VLA on just selective channels or the stereo mains? I'd say sans-patchbay, you're just going to be hooking it up in between channels as they go in, or routing your channels in your DAW to any of the outputs on the back of the Firepod, running those to the VLA, BACK into the inputs on the BACK for 1-2 (keeping the gain knob on the front at 0) to affect pre-recorded tracks...

MEAT

[b3groover]

You want to take the XLR outs of the Sytek into the 1/4" TRS inputs of the Firepod. Don't plug them into the XLR inputs because you'll be adding a very unnecessary gain stage. The Sytek is already outputting a line level signal, so no need to go back into a mic preamp. You'll need some female XLR to 1/4" TRS cables.

The front 1/4" inputs on first two channels of the Presonus are for instruments (like guitars), so do not use those. Use the ones on the back (only for channels 1 & 2... the other 1/4" inputs on the front are line level and do not have corresponding inputs on the back anyway).

Rather than turning the input gain knobs all the way down, I've found that standard line level is achieved by turning them up exactly 10 clicks. But I also know that the Sytek is reknown for having a lot of gain, so you could probably get away easily with turning them all the way down.