Okay, so normally if i can get a board patch, i tape from my mics, and from the board because i have 2 iRiver ihp-120's. The other day i was at a show and i wanted to get a patch but the sound guy wouldn't let me, so i tried an experiment.
First, i hooked up my main iriver to the preamp and my mics, with 10db of gain added from my preamp and none on my recorder. Then, i went line out from that recorder into the line in on my other recorded. Normally i run semi conservative on my levels, so i thought that i could keep my first recorders levels conservative, while i could boost the second one a good bit and see if i don't clip. So once i hooked up the second one, i noticed that while the gain on that 2nd recorder were at 0 too, my levels were significantly lower than the first recorder.
This seems weird, because, wouldn't you think that if the preamp was sending out 10db of gain, and the first recorder and the second were chained together through the line in and out, they would have the same levels? I literally had to add 10db more of gain to the second recorder for the levels to get level with the first recorder.
Am i wrong about this? It seems like this second recorder would now have 20db of gain added with the first only having 10db, but they have about the same levels now???
I'm confused.