Hey guys :)

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DukeDauphin

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Hey there,

Looking around here, it seems like the perfect place to join :)

Im a home recordist, i write in a lot of dofferent styles, but mostly tinker around with guitars and synths and the like and have a ponchance for sleigh bells and other percussion.

My setup is a Mackie 1604 vlz mixer, R8 reel to reel tape recorder for bouncing tracks down too, mbox pro, and a macbook.

My first question goes like this:

Im trying to get a clean signal out of an old dictaphone that ive got some old material, and am having alarming problems with this. I am one of fairly standard understanding for the equipment i have, i am the first to admit, i use it in a fairly basic way, but so far, that is what has worked for me, and i hope to improve my knowledge with it all, and as we all know, its a trial and error thing....

So, my dictaphone has an ear output, which goes into my stereo just fine and plays back at a normal, audible level. Putting the output from the dictaphone into the mixer via the tape in input (im aware that this may be first mistake). The mbox is then fed via the aux ins and the mixer feeds the signal to the mbox via the sub outs. When i select the channel via logic, the channel screams out so there is a bad somewhere. Im hoping that someone in their infinite wisdom could help with this quandry, and help me get on my way to becoming a more reliable, happy recordist :)

Many thanks, and i hope to see you all around a fair bit......
 
Can you back down the output of the dictaphone? That's an amplified low impedance output, feeding into a high impedance input on your mixer. Remove the mixer from the chain- go straight to Mbox from the dictaphone. Turn the gain down.
 
Agreed- the mixer does *nothing* for you in that signal chain that I can see.-Richie
 
Thanks so much to you both for replying. Having the input straight from the dictaphone with a mini jack to phono lead, going into the aux input right at the back of the mbox pro is just met with a howl on tracks 3 and 4 in logic with aux in selected on front of mbox........ Am i doing something wrong there?

So in future, am i right in thinking that on the mackie mixer the right outputs for this kind of thing are the sub outs going into the aux ins of the mbox? Im about to start a group of drum channels going into the 2 inputs on the mbox so that would clear up the next question.....:)
 
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A 'howl"? Sounds like a feedback loop, maybe. Is your monitor/computer sound out fed back to the mbox?
 
Yes it is as the mbox goes back into the mixer, and is routed to my amp.
 
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