hey Songsoffreedom and Tim, its my understanding having owned a MME that if you turn the gain knobs all the way down to the left, at which time they click into a locked position, then the preamp function in inactivated and the unit then operates purely as an ad converter just like the AD1000 does, I could be mistaken about this but I think I am correct, and there sure are a lot of people running a nice preamp in front of their MiniMe's to have its preamp function on as well
Todd R's post indicates how this works. Really, give it a read. But if you don't want to, I'll summarize: One cannot "inactivate" the gain stage (preamp) on the MMe or AD1000. One can merely reduce the amount of gain produced at the gain stage's point in the signal path. Whether running "mic-in", or "line-in" on the AD1000 or MMe (or V3, etc.), one still runs the signal through the
same analog gain stage. It
cannot be "deactivated", turned off, by-passed, removed from the signal path, etc.
So, when you used to turn your gain knobs all the way to the left until they clicked into position - you weren't "turning off" the gain stage, you were simply reducing the amount of gain in the gain stage so you could accept a line-level signal without clipping.