balance and line inputs?

[safe_matt]

Hello everyone!! as you can probably guess from my being here, i know pretty much nothing about all this.. I have spent a lot of time in studios, but i dont know about the actual nuts and bolts of it all.. anyway, im thinking of buying a USB mixer, instead of getting an audio interface, but i was wondering whether this was a good idea? i want to get a good few inputs so i can record drums.. also what is the difference between a balance and line input? apart from that ones xlr and the others 1/4" jack? thanks a lot!!
matt

 

[Matt123]

What sort of setup are you looking to get in to?

 

[safe_matt]

Im going to get a fairly new version of Logic (im not sure which, i will find out..) to run on my power book G4. im basically just going to use it for audio and perhaps a tiny bit of midi, just to record demo's and maybe stuff for small releases of my band and solo stuff.. But i really want to be able to record fairly decent sounding drums. I want to keep it quite basic, but good enough for stuff to be release quality.
thanks! matt

 

[bennychico11]

balanced and line level don't have that much in common really
balanced can be line level and line level can be balanced.

i think your question is more what is the difference between the XLR inputs and the 1/4" inputs. Generally speaking the XLR inputs on your interface are going to be for microphone inputs. The 1/4" inputs will be for line level devices (line level meaning non-microphone/non-record player). Sometimes guitars can be plugged into the 1/4" inputs too.

 

[safe_matt]

But could i not plug 4 mic's in with XLR's (providing i have 4 xlr inputs) and then another two with an XLR to 1/4" jack (providing i have two standard line inputs)? what would be the problem with this? would they end up very different volumes or something? because i always just plugged my mic into the 1/4" jack on my digital 8 track and it seemed to work fine.

 

[bennychico11]

But could i not plug 4 mic's in with XLR's (providing i have 4 xlr inputs) and then another two with an XLR to 1/4" jack (providing i have two standard line inputs)? what would be the problem with this? would they end up very different volumes or something? because i always just plugged my mic into the 1/4" jack on my digital 8 track and it seemed to work fine.

a microphone is a low level source. It doesn't put out enough voltage for you to use. Inside the XLR jacks on the interface are preamplifiers that boosts the microphone up to line level. This is why only mics are usually plugged in here. Line level devices are already hot enough, so we plug those into line level inputs because there is no point in amplifying the signal even more. It's important to plug the correct sources into their correct destinations. This is electricity we're talking about. But another variable also depends on the microphone you are using. Low impedance versus high impedance makes a difference too.

 

[safe_matt]

cool, thanks a lot man!!

 

[Minion]

You should also Consider dropping the Idea of getting a USB Mixer and look into getting a Firewire Mixer as USB mixers will generally Mix dows all of the Channels to a Stereo signal and then send it to your PC were with a Firewire mixer every input gets it"s own Track in the recording software...

This is because USB has a Very Limited Bandwidth and can not transfer many chanels of audio were Firewire has a Much higher Bandwidth and can transfer 24 or even 36 tracks of audio....(USB being faster than firewire was Just Marketing Hype, Firewire is much faster)

The Firewire mixer will be more expensive but also be a Much better recording device...
You can get a 16 channel Firewire mixer for as low as $600 which is enought channels to record even the largest Bands....


Cheers