| Home recording and general music post from the archived Yabb Recording Website Message Board. Some of the info here may be outdated but many of the audio recording and home studio tips are still good. Note: The only tags I made and attempt to convert are italics, bold, center and underline. So if you see some gibberish surrounded by brackets, just ignore it.
Recording Website Archived Yabb board Post
Febuary 2001 Yabb Message Board Archive
Subject: help with console
by Mike | 04/01/01 at 10:41:57
Hello, I need a little help. Basicly I've just been recording on a little Tascam mixer and some ADAT's for the past couple of years. Well, a guy accross town was selling his TAC Matchless console for DIRT CHEAP so I bought it. Upon installing it I realized that I don't really know a thing about bigger console's, but I seem to have gotten everything working fine and it all hooked up. I even built the big crazy 90 pin ELCO connector's for the tape in/out's. So here's the problem. The console is not sending enough level to tape. Even if I have everything cranked the level just barly reaches -4 dB on my ADAT's. The console has a "buss trim" that I have turned all the way up and it's still not enough. This can't be right - as I could slam the tape on my crappy little Tascam mixer. Can someone give me a hint as to what the problem is? It wuld be very helpfull. Thanks.
Subject: Re: help with console
by db | 04/01/01 at 16:32:18
8)There could be a couple reasons for this.
(1) The former owner has selected internal jumpers to output
-10db levels.
(2) The outputs are balanced 600ohm connections and the pins must be wired a certain way to make them unbalanced, and still produce the +4db normal level.
Either case get the manual, and study the signal flow chart, this will show what levels are supposed to be at different points in the mixer, and will show internal jumpers (if any), and how to set them, it should also show how to make connections to, and from balanced and unbalanced equipment. Some use rather unothidox connections, believe it or not.
Just some suggestions.
--db
Subject: Re: help with console
by Puke | 04/01/01 at 17:32:03
Dude,
if you email me a shematic of an output section I'll
give you a hand.
Off, hand, the most common thing people do to cause this problem when wiring things up is to NOT connect cold and ground to one another properly (when one of the units is NOT balanced.) this is most import4ant when the balanced unit is balanced by way of transformer rather than circut.
A quick way to diagnose your problem is to start with a "channel out" and see what you have for level...using alligator clips to tip ring and sleeve, you can quickly see by a process of elimination where you would get the most level..It will also be the quietest and punchiest configuration.
Then do the same with the buss outs...they will rarely be wired differently than the channel outs.
If your console does not have channel outs and buss outs (other than from the elco connectors) it'll be a process of changing pinouts on ONE buss until you get it right (mroe of a pain in the ass because it's nearly impossible to get alligator clips small enough not to touch more than one pin)...THEN you can change the rest of them to match.
Subject: Re: help with console
by Mike | 04/02/01 at 18:41:07
Thanks alot for the help guys. I think I found the problem. I didn't connect the cold to ground properly (at all to be exact). I used jumpers in the elco connector (big pain) and found the problem. It was a bit confusing because the console's buss outs are +4 unbalanced, the elco connectors on the ADAT's are balanced, and the console's manual was a little misleading, and I thought it was telling me to let the cold wire go nowhere, insted of to ground. Thanks for the help.
Mike