R
Richard Monroe
Well-known member
Well, Chess, as you know, I was thinking about parting with my DBX386, but you made a comment about keeping it as an A-D converter, and it started me thinking. It's a good clean pre with an excellent A-D converter, but my problem was getting enough clean gain out of it to bypass the pres in my Roland VS1824 without using it's silly front end tewb drive. If I want that kind of distortion, I'll get some Radio Shack mics, thank you. Well, I had another problem, if you want to call it that. I aquired an Avalon AD2022 to get 2 clean channels with buku gain (it does that, alright), but I don't have a lot of unbalanced cables, and I wanted to try compressing it with an RNC, which would require female XLR to TS cables to the RNC, and TS to TS cables to the board, which would tie up my best instrument cables. The XLR to TS cables I couldn't even find, so I ordered them. (I have no easy source for neutrik connecters, so if I wanted to solder them up, I'd have to order the connectors anyway.)
So I took your idea, as a short term solution, and killed both birds with one stone. I took the balanced line outs of the Avalon to the TRS line ins of the DBX, put the RNC into the signal chain from the DBX's insert points, turned the drive to zero, took the line out S/Pdif to the board, and cranked the Avalon. Holy shit! Best clean sound I've gotten here, in fact, maybe better than the Avalon straight to the board. I suppose it's all in how you describe it. If you say "I use a DBX386 as an A-D and as insert points for compression.", it sounds cool. If you say, "I use an Avalon AD2022 as a front end for my DBX386", it sounds like you're out of your fucking mind! All I can say is, it worked, and it worked really well. Thanks again.-Richie
So I took your idea, as a short term solution, and killed both birds with one stone. I took the balanced line outs of the Avalon to the TRS line ins of the DBX, put the RNC into the signal chain from the DBX's insert points, turned the drive to zero, took the line out S/Pdif to the board, and cranked the Avalon. Holy shit! Best clean sound I've gotten here, in fact, maybe better than the Avalon straight to the board. I suppose it's all in how you describe it. If you say "I use a DBX386 as an A-D and as insert points for compression.", it sounds cool. If you say, "I use an Avalon AD2022 as a front end for my DBX386", it sounds like you're out of your fucking mind! All I can say is, it worked, and it worked really well. Thanks again.-Richie
Seriously, though, you can look at it as a good outboard a/d converter for the money with a couple of preamps thrown in just for the fun of it. Hook an external word clock up to that badboy and you have a force to contend with.