Thanks for the guidence all !!.. My budget is sub $500 is possible.
jmbell, I appreciate the "shameless plug" as the little box is top of mind for me.. I hear that the "Tinybox" would be underpowered and wouldn't work for 184's .but the littlebox should work... One thing I've been told is that the km184 line has an extremely hot output stage and no -10dB attenuator, so, I guess a need a preamp that has enough padding to be able to attenuate the signal for the recorder. Any thoughts on how the little box would address that?
Thanks again,
Fitz
for a budget of around 500 or less then is the littlebox (a great economical box imho since the ADC on the D50 is generally considered goo), or if you scrimp and save the usbpre2 which would have optical out that the D50 can take (and the ADC in the usbpre2 is the same used in the 7 series recorders). A used Grace Design V2 would be an option if you hunt and save a bit; usually around $600 but sparkey's right, stuff's a buyers market in the YS now.
The 184s are rated at 15mv/pa,
I personally wouldn't consider them hot mics necessarily, but if paired with a preamp that has a high minimum gain or a recorder which has a low max line input before clipping rating, they could pose a problem. For example, I'd have zero worry using the usbpre2 because it's max input signal at the ADC stage is something like +25dbu, and the max mic in is still something like +10db. You could blast a good 25db, maybe 30db of gain and still not clip it in most conditions you'll be in. I can't find the max db line input for the D50 so you might investigate that if your pre-amp is going to be an analog only unit. I think it's more then +8dbu, but that's based on other literature and isn't a confirmation. (check the thread in the recorder section, someone may have figured it out)