Running stereo and DI boxes

[phil59]

Yes, pan Left fully Left, and Right fully Right. Or most mixers have a couple of stereo channels which do the same thing.

Ok perfect thank

[pablomastodon]

I use Samson's stereo DI, it costs 39 €, it's active needs power, can take phantom +48v.
Did A/B test with / without and, to my surprise could hear & confirm a difference in sound, nothing dramatic, just a little less high frequencies, making the sound a little less "bright".

Not surprising to me that a Samson product would affect sound quality. Many years ago I used a 2U mixer of theirs without doing any A/B comparison -- until one side of the stereo bus started wigging. Switched to going direct to band's Mackie (without submix) and the difference was night and day. Suddenly was hearing detail for the first time that was never there before. Similar experience with Behringer. Personally, I will not look at those brands again.

Bless,

Pablo

[Darren]

Yes, pan Left fully Left, and Right fully Right. Or most mixers have a couple of stereo channels which do the same thing.

I actually find panning 9 o'clock for the left channel and 3 o'clock for the right channel works better in live situations. It gives better spread as anything hard panned in the sound patch or program can still be heard regardless of where you stand in the room.

[Frantz]

I use Samson's stereo DI, it costs 39 €, it's active needs power, can take phantom +48v.
Did A/B test with / without and, to my surprise could hear & confirm a difference in sound, nothing dramatic, just a little less high frequencies, making the sound a little less "bright".

Not surprising to me that a Samson product would affect sound quality. Many years ago I used a 2U mixer of theirs without doing any A/B comparison -- until one side of the stereo bus started wigging. Switched to going direct to band's Mackie (without submix) and the difference was night and day. Suddenly was hearing detail for the first time that was never there before. Similar experience with Behringer. Personally, I will not look at those brands again.

Bless,

Pablo

+1 This is the last product I buy from Samson : I had a "Samson servo 170 studio amplifier" that had defective condenser only 4 years after purchase (and very little use, like a few days per month).

I lean toward buying a decent passive DI now.

http://www.radialeng.com/prod2.php



http://www.radialeng.com/jdistereo.php



Has someone heard a difference between "Radial Pro D2" and "Radial JDI Stereo" ?

[pablomastodon]

Don't know about difference, but Radial is the accepted choice for top professionals working arena tours internationally. All the "big boys" (and girls) use them.

Bless,

Pablo

[Quai34]

J from JDI is for Jansen transformer, the top quality, the pro2 uses only their own transformers, very good ones, but not as god as the JDI...

[nsureit]

Watch out, though. Radial briefly switched to Eclipse transformers because of short supply of Jensens. It depends upon when it was manufactured. See attached FAQ at bottom of page.

http://www.radialeng.com/jdiduplex-faq.php

My old JDI Duplex is like a Swiss Army Knife. Provides fabulous solutions for all kinds of connectivity issues. Best $300 I ever spent.

[GeeDeWee]

But if you use a personal mixer which has balanced XLR outs, their is no need to use DI's, right? The aux output serves as a personal monitor signal.
Or is there a reason to use a separate stereo DI-box such as the Radial (and connect the thru from the DI to the personal mixer for monitoring)?

[jpoelmans]

@GeeDeWee:
A DI still isolates your rig from the rest of the stage gear. Your mixer doesn't (well that depends, if it had electronically balanced outputs it does certainly not isolate anything, of there's a transformer balanced output, it depends on the grounding topology...). In a setup with several hundreds of feet of signal cable and power cable (last time I checked even most small cover bands with their FOH mixer in the middle of the venue qualify this description), there is a large chance of ground loops and thus hum. Electrically isolating your signal connections can solve those kinds of hum. But you have to be sure to isolate everything, so the only non-isolated connection from your keyboard rig to the rest of the world is your power plug (and make sure you are only using one power plug and then distributing your own power, which is called star grounding).

That, and balancing your line signal is the purpose of a DI.

Offcourse, many times you can be lucky, and the mixer you are describing might work without any hum... But if for example there is a dimmer pack powered by the wrong outlet, then bingo, you'll desperately need a DI, or find the right outlet. The former is easier, the later is very stressful And for this reason, in a touring environment (even small gigs) the technicians will ask no questions and connect your keyboard through a DI: Just to be sure...

If you have your FOH mixer on stage on the other hand, well, then I would probably risk taking a 10m jack cable and just feed the unbalanced signal from your nord directly into that mixer. Line levels are fairly strong to survive that distance unbalanced, and the power distribution is not that complicated. But I would still make sure that the whole rig (bass, keyboard, FOH and mixer) are all powered through the same power outlet (star grounding).

[dhbp-nord]

When my band runs a mixer onstage it is right beside me so I can just use the 1/4" inputs on the mixer. I carry my DI's in my rack if I need them for noise isolation in that case. On the gigs where we do use a FOH tech, I send him/her the DI feeds from the rack.

DH