making a phase-reverse cable

[FALKEN]

or polarity reverse, whatever. I took a 2 foot patch cable and cut it in half, and was met by an outer sheilding sort of wire if you twist it together, a red wire and a clear wire. I run a patch bay where the 16 outputs of my recorder are half normalled to the 16 inputs on my mixer. I could insert the cable into any track and have instant phase reversal. so I put the braided wires together, and reversed the red and clear wires on each other. plugged it in, and no signal. damnit, I made another bum cable. I have no skillz. so I take it apart, and just start touching the wires together to see what works. apparently I can only get sound if red is touching red. no other combination reverses the phase or anything. and then it hit me, the outputs of my recorder are UNBALANCED! arrrgh!!! so I was switching the signal from the good lead over to a lead with no signal!

on second thought though, my mixer (with balanced inputs) SHOULD recognize the signal on the "reversed" wire and revese it when it gets there and my cable should still work, even though there is no incoming signal on the regular wire, right?

[FALKEN]

ignore me.

for some reason the one track which i decided to test was plugged into the insert (unbalanced), not the line in (balanced). seems to work now. damn, im a dumbass.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Originally Posted by FALKEN

ignore me.

for some reason the one track which i decided to test was plugged into the insert (unbalanced), not the line in (balanced). seems to work now. damn, im a dumbass.

Nah, a dumbass would have never found the problem. And even dumber ass would have never coped to having a simple brain fart in the first place. You're OK.

Kind of hard getting the brain firing on all cylinders on Saturday mornings, isn't it?

G.

[FALKEN]

yeah man. actually the cable was in the insert because its a mixing trick i used when recording the initial tracks to tape (2 weeks ago). i move the balanced line in cable over to the insert. then, i put my insert cable in the patch bay (and interrupt the half-normal connection). pretty easy way to make good use of the board and bay.