Recently I've bought a Shure sm57 mic and I want to use it for vocals and acoustic guitar that I will record into my DAW on computer. When I bought it I didn't know this mic needs a lot of gain (around 50db).
My first thought after doing some research was to buy an audio interface, but a lot of people claimed that the pre amp in audio interface like focusrite scarlett 2i2 does not provide enough gain for this mic. This is why I decided to buy a separate pre amp.
I know that if you set pre amp's gain to more than 70-80% it starts adding a lot of noise. Because of that I thought that maybe it is a good idea to boost signal from my microphone through separate pre amp by 20/30db (around 50% of its overall gain potential) and then boost it again by 15/20db with a help of audio interface.
The problem is that this mic needs a lot of gain and I don't want to set the gain knob to 100% on my interface or pre amp. I thought that it will work fine if I enchance the signal from both pre amps (standalone one and audio interface's built in) and won't get as much noise as I would while turning knob on one device to 100%. What do you think about that?
I'm new to this stuff. If I say something stupid, I'm sorry. I'm just a newbie :)
Thanks!