Studio configuration

[Jeroleen]

I would truly appreciate any thoughts or guidance on the configuration of the main part of my studio. The studio is built around a Mackie 24/8 and a
MOTU 24 i/o. There are a number of patch bays hooked and a bit of outboard gear wired to the patrch bays and auxillary sends/returns.

Here is the crux of the question. Since I am a keyboard player, I have all of my midi keys and modules plugged into a patch bay which then routes each output of the synth to an input on the board. From the board, the bus outputs are sent to another patch bay which then routes those outputs to the inputs on the 24 i/o.

The outputs of the 24 i/o goes to another patch bay wich then routes those outputs to the tape return inputs on the board.

This seems right however, I cannot seem to get a good signal when I bypass this whole mess and try to plug a synth output directly into an outboard preamp and then plug the preamp output directly into the 24 i/o input.

The board has an output called direct out and I wonder if I would not be better served by taking a direct out from each channel into a patch bay so I can patch it directly into a preamp and then into the 24 i/o.

Ultimately, there seems to be something amiss with my setup. When I go out of the preamp directly into the 24 i/o, I get hardly any signal. The preamp is a Universal Audio 2-610 which should sound better than the Mackie preamps. It does not because the signal is so weak. What gives. Is there an impedence mismatch somewhere.

I thank you in advance for taking the time to read this and make a suggestion.

 

[Jeroleen]

Sorry, one more observation. The line input on the preamp is balanced. If the output of the synths and modules are unbalanced, can thes be causing the weak signal.

 

[headstack]

Yep, if it's unbal to balanced.
What you can do is take the unbalanced signal and at the keyboard end, drop the shield and connect the low conductor of the balanced signal to the sleeve of the unbalanced connector.
If I have thoroughly confused you, e-mail me and I can walk you through it.
It also sounds like you are possibly running a bit of extra cable.
Ultimately, you'd have every connector on the patchbays and could run a session with no cables plugged in. If you have pach bays that can be normaled, (top holes are connected to adjacent bottom holes with no cables plugged in) you can really do it up.
Sounds like you are off to a good start though.
p.s. Yamaha used to have a book for sound re-inforcement and it had loads of wiring info. I used to loan it out to students and it was very helpful.
Stack

 

[Jeroleen]

Yep, I am not quite sure what you mean. In unbalanced cable there are two wires, tip and ring. What has to happen to these wires to acheive this.

By the way, what I don't understand is how the line level on the Mackie pre-amps seems to be fine but the line level on the UA seems to have the problem. I can get enough gain to clip the channel but for some reason it still seems weak and even a bit thin. This leads to one more observation and question, when I am working in pure midi, before rendering anything to audio, the levels are pretty hot. Once I bring it to audio I seem to loose some body. I believe this is a monitoring issue as much as anything else but I still want to clean up the wires and get as clean and strong a signal as I can.

By the way, the patch bays are normalled and they are set up so the top goes to the bottom unless something is plugged in. This way I can have all my synths plugged in but I can jump them around to different inputs on the mixer and/or MOTU and I can insert various devices such as compressors, reverbs, delays, EQ, and such.

Oh yeah, one last thing...the Mackie boards have a direct out which by passes the output from the busses or the main stereo mix. It seems this would be the best way to record audio with an outboard preamp while still monitoring the signal along with whatever else is going on.

I hope I have a handle on all of this. Now for the cable surgery.