Balance to RCA . . .

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remo_marbleblue

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I've recently invested in some recording equipment where I can use balanced connections. For instance, I go from my mics, to the board, to the compressers, back to board, out to headphone applifier. So far these are all balanced connections and it sounds great in the headphones. The problem is that I just bought a Tascam CD recorder which I really like, but I have to use RCA cables to go from my board to it (unbalanced). It doesn't sound as powerfull when I play back the CD. I think I'm losing signal in the RCA connection. Am I correct? If so, how can I fix this?

It has an optical input also but I don't know how to use that . .

Thanks all!
 
Is it a digital or analog board?

If it's digital, then figure out how to go digital out of your board > digital in of your CD recorder.

If it's an analog board, then the ideal route would be balanced out > balanced input of high-quality A/D converter > optical input of CD recorder.

The latter might cost you some extra $cratch, though, if you know what I'm saying.

You might try balanced out of your board > impedence-matching transformer > RCA in of your recorder . . . but I'm guessing that's probably not the issue. My guess is that the biggest factor in this is likely the A/D conversion from your mixer to the recorder.
 
Could you recommend an A/D converter? I've looked at a few on the web but I would have no idea what to look for.

I assume that means analog to digital.

Thanks,

- Doug
 
Yea, and it converts your analog signal to 1's and 0's, so to speak.

A really good A/D converter would be something like this:

http://www.mercenary.com/lucidad9624.html

A pretty decent one that could save you some money (if you don't need the absolute "cutting edge" technology, that is) might look something like this:

http://www.audiomidi.com/common/cfm/product.cfm?Product_ID=937

And if you don't mind buying used, you can often get the Symetrix 620, which is basically the same thing as the above-mentioned Lucid model, for around a couple hundred bones or so. Something like that might be a great option for you. Since (I assume) you're just going straight to 16-bit / 44.1 khz for CD "mastering," then it's not necessarily going to be of any great advantage for you to convert at the highest possible respolution. 20-bit would probably be fine, but you'd definitely want something that dithers to 16 bit.

In other words, you could possibly be looking at "yesterdays" technology and get by with it for a lot less cash and still get very good results . . . provided this isn't for commercial/professional purposes -- which I gather it isn't.

So many options, though. Look around. Do some keyword searches. Educate yourself.
 
What if yur Cd-R is in your computer. Could one of these converters be used between an analog board and say an Audiophile 24/96 soundcard?
 
werewolf831 said:
What if yur Cd-R is in your computer. Could one of these converters be used between an analog board and say an Audiophile 24/96 soundcard?
Click to expand...
Yes - send the digital outputs on the A/D converter to the digital inputs on the soundcard.
 
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