VERY SIMPLE mixerless studio question

  • Thread starter Thread starter PHILANDDON
  • Start date Start date
P

PHILANDDON

New member
I'm going from a preamp with balanced XLR outs into a quarter-inch tape recorder with (unbalanced?) RCA inputs. Would an XLR to RCA cable be fine, or will I lose signal strength or something worse? The recorder and preamp are close to each other so I only need to run a short line. I'd like to avoid going through a mixer so as to retain the quality of the signal coming out of my preamp. THANKS.
 
PHILANDDON said:
I'm going from a preamp with balanced XLR outs into a quarter-inch tape recorder with (unbalanced?) RCA inputs. Would an XLR to RCA cable be fine, or will I lose signal strength or something worse? The recorder and preamp are close to each other so I only need to run a short line. I'd like to avoid going through a mixer so as to retain the quality of the signal coming out of my preamp. THANKS.
Click to expand...

You can do that just fine without a mixer. You do still plan on using a mixer for mix down right?
 
No acutally. I was gonna mix digitally, if at all. (I'm into mono. Old time country stuff).
 
I just reread your post and you are going form balanced to unblalanced. You will want a mixer in there just to make things easier than buying a bunch of crummy connectors.
 
Outlaws said:
a bunch of crummy connectors.
Click to expand...
There are non-Radio Shack adapters out there, and they are anything but crummy.

If there are no ground issues there's no reason that he can't go from balanced outputs to unbalanced inputs.




.
 
And 10 years from now, after you buy your first mixer, you'll wonder why you didn't buy a mixer 10 years ago....

If going thru a mixer ruins your sound quality, it only means you got a really crappy mixer. For $150-200 bucks you can get a mixer that wont give you any audible degradation in sound quality at all (and No, it's not a Behringer!).....assuming you are not using a $5000 dollar preamp.

And how are you gonna tell anyway if you are working everything in mono?
 
soundchaser59 said:
And how are you gonna tell anyway if you are working everything in mono?
Click to expand...

What does mono have to do with bad sound? I would take a quality mono recording over a shitty stereo recording.
 
Well, I was gonna get some short (three feet) high quality XLR(Female) to RCA male cables. The big concern I have is losing signal strength for some reason 6db seems to be the magic number. Anyone care to explain? Thanks for the mixer suggestion. Again, I was hoping for the pristine sound quality of my preamp and also to avoid the clutter of a mixer. But maybe, I will pick up one. I've had my eye on Soundcraft Spirit M4 for some time.
 
There is no need for a mixer there, just get short good quality cables and it will be fine. :)
 
soundchaser59 said:
For $150-200 bucks you can get a mixer that wont give you any audible degradation in sound quality at all (and No, it's not a Behringer!).....
Click to expand...

Care to name names?
 
Yamaha MG12/4 is a solid little mixer.
Decent pre-amps. Lots of ways to configure.
$200. I own three, no problems at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top