Recording and MIC pre amp questions

[abaez]

So I went ahead and bought some binaural mics. I bought them with a battery box and I don't have an MD yet, I plan on getting one though. I decided to try how the mics sounded, I hooked up the mics with battery box to my computers sound card line in (Turtle Beach Santa Cruz), I jacked the recording level way up, and played an mp3 through my computer speakers. I used cool edit pro to record, when I record, the volume level is EXTREMELY low. I double checked everything, record level at max in the settings, battery box working, I even turned my computer speakers *Extremely* loud and tried to record with the mics from about 6 inches away and it was still very low here is an example:

http://www.dslextreme.com/users/abaez/Unti...itled%20(2).wav

The sound card works fine when I use my headphones with a mic for voice communication in games so I know it's not that.

Now when I emailed the guy I bought them from, he said the mics he sells aren't made to record onto a computer and that I would need a mic pre amp to have a good recording. Now my question is if this guy is telling the truth or bsing me? I'm planning on using a minidisc to record and I would think that a computer would have more than enough power and such to record. So do you need a microphone pre amp AND battery box when recording with a minidisc at a concert? Or should the mics work without a pre amp normally? I still havent bought my MD so I can't really test it out but I would think you wouldn't need a pre amp to record....

thanks

[Guest Anonymous]

line-in is for VERY loud sounds (hard-rock concert eg) that I'm sure you can't reproduct at home. So don't worry. Try with mic-in.

You need a preamp only if your md has not mic-in and that you plan to record (via line-in of course) sounds that aren't VERY loud.