Problems after switching from Mbox1 -> Digi 002 (BLA tweakhead mod)

J

joewax

New member
I would really appreciate some sort of advice.

I just got my digi in today. I have previously been recording on a mbox1, through a grace m101 preamp which connected to the mbox with an insert cable (3 prong).

I just got the digi, and plugged it in with the same insert cable. I cant seem to accurately monitor the input, since for some odd reason, i have to turn my preamp way higher to barely reach the yellow in the monitoring bar on the left while recording using Protools. Before this change, i could turn the amp much lower and the bar would be halfway in the yellow. Does anybody know if i should get a single 1/4 trs cable to connect the preamp to the digi instead? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
What do you mean by "insert cable"? You should be using a TRS-TRS cable to connect the preamp to the 002. One studio I work in has a 002R with various preamps, including one Grace M101, and I don't recall any difficulty getting enough level.
 
the cable i have been using is like this

Hosa STP201 (1 Meter) | Sweetwater.com


I think that may be the problem.

The thing that was irritating me is that I would turn the preamp way up while recording the vocal, since the green monitor bar would be very low. But when i turned the grace up this high, i would see the little light turn red, meaning it was clipping. The cable fix should solve this hopefully.
 
The right cable should help.

But I wonder if your target level is correct. You should be keeping your peaks at or below -12dBFS and your average levels around -18dBFS. Unfortunately Pro Tools (that I've used) doesn't give you any hard numbers on the track meters. I think halfway up corresponds to -12dBFS, so you don't really need to peak any higher than that.
 
the thing was, using my mbox, the levels were considerably higher. thanks for the advice though. ill see what happens after i get the new cable.
 
Yes TRS > TRS is the correct cabling. Are you using the insert to split the signal and record two channels at once?
 
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