jah thanks.
my main concern is the pre of the DA-P1 overloading.
I knew in advance the ad section is just ok.
the stuff I mainly tape is very loud rock/electronic stuff and the Gefells are a "hot" mic as far as levels are concerned, so I want to minimize the possibility of overloading the preamp.
I also dont want to use the pads on the mic and the pre simultaneously as that can introduce low-level noise in the system.
Luvean,
you're facing Gefells yielding -40 dB re 1V @94 dB SPL. That's a pretty standard mic level. It means 0.01 Volts rms at 94 dB SPL. 100 mVolts at 114 dB SPL.
The mic pre in the DA-P1 is a discrete front & op-amp buffer design of fine performance (wrt to noise and linearity). One could argue that the parts used are not the best but hey.
The signal then heads into an op-amp buffer with gain (a summer actually, the line-in comes here as well). This is the point where the signal will brickwall first.
The real problem is that the DA-P1 mic pre is strapped for 40 dB gain. The pad drops it by 20 dB.
The mic pre brickwalls with 15 mV (no pad) and 150 mVolts (-20 dB pad) on the XLR inputs.
So with 114 dB on the mics you have essentially no headroom left!
There is a -15 dB pad _inside_ the box powering the MG actives. I recommend you activate
this pad when using the MG set with the DA-P1.
PS The signal path in the DA-P1 is mic-pre, inverter/summer, attenuator(volume control), buffer stage with limiter function, buffer/inverter and lastly the 18 bits ADC. All in all a fairly complex signal path. Just what part of the sound that can be attributed to the ADC alone is not easily established :-)..