My smallish home studio has a simple problem: the control room and the performance space are one and the same. This means that I need to mute the monitors while tracking, while still sending signal to the headphone amp.
My mixer, an Alesis 12R (just used for preamps and monitoring), has separate outputs for mains and monitors. The main outputs go to a power amp for the main monitors, while the monitor outputs go to the headphone distribution amp.
What I used to do with my old powered EV board was to put the board in standby while tracking, which left the preamps and headphone output live, but muted the mains. The Alesis can't do that, and I can't even just drop the main fader, since the monitor/headphone output is post-master.
It seems like the best solution for my problem is to have some kind of device to mute the main outputs between the mixer and the power amp. I think this would be a pretty simple thing to wire up; one DPST switch for each channel -- or a single 4P*T -- just interrupting the hot and cold lines. (The outputs are balanced, and I'd leave the signal ground connected.) However, when rewiring guitars, I've noticed that if I don't ground the amp-side when interrupting, it hums like crazy. So would I have to ground anything here?
Alternatively, are there any possible solutions that I'm just not thinking of? Any suggestions are welcome!
My mixer, an Alesis 12R (just used for preamps and monitoring), has separate outputs for mains and monitors. The main outputs go to a power amp for the main monitors, while the monitor outputs go to the headphone distribution amp.
What I used to do with my old powered EV board was to put the board in standby while tracking, which left the preamps and headphone output live, but muted the mains. The Alesis can't do that, and I can't even just drop the main fader, since the monitor/headphone output is post-master.
It seems like the best solution for my problem is to have some kind of device to mute the main outputs between the mixer and the power amp. I think this would be a pretty simple thing to wire up; one DPST switch for each channel -- or a single 4P*T -- just interrupting the hot and cold lines. (The outputs are balanced, and I'd leave the signal ground connected.) However, when rewiring guitars, I've noticed that if I don't ground the amp-side when interrupting, it hums like crazy. So would I have to ground anything here?
Alternatively, are there any possible solutions that I'm just not thinking of? Any suggestions are welcome!