Members Dega500 Posted December 3, 2012 Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 We went to set up for a club gig Saturday afternoon. We got our monitors situated (Aux. 1 thru 3) and then moved on to ring in the mains. We were invited to run our main "M" feed from our mixer into a channel on the clubs mixer and power so they could control the music going into and out of our breaks and of of course the overall volume in the club and we agreed. When we went to fire up the mains there was no signal out front. The guy in charge of their console kept trying this and that, asked us to try a couple of different cables to no avail then all of a sudden SCREEEEEECCCHHHH! He pushed something on the console and it went to wide open in a split second. [Please allow me take a moment away from my current topic to say that I can see what might happen to ones hearing if that were to somehow happen while using IEM's without limiters] Now, there was signal to the mains but it is a very, very thin and tinny, weak signal. I think, ooops, this guy just blew out their mains but upon trying some music from their computer catalog they sounded fine. We messed around a bit and couldn't figure out for the life of us what to do. I then tried the Left and Right sends with the same result. As a last effort I tried to send a signal from Aux. 4 and bam, full range and power sound. We ended up mixing and performing that night from Aux. 4 and everything went well and we got many compliments to boot. I am hoping that I'm overlooking something that I may have muted or turned down. Maybe there is a mini-switch that accidentally got engaged or something else on the board that we don't normally mess with got engaged that may be causing this issue with or M, L & R sends. Could that moment going to full power (their console, not ours) have done damage to our board? Anyone experienced this before? We love this board and have never had a seconds trouble with it until now. Any thought or advice is appreciated. Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vinny D Posted December 3, 2012 Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 Did you try sending your main out to your amps/speakers (not going through the house board)? How could you have mixed using your Aux 4 signal? you would have had no channel EQ control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members trevcda Posted December 3, 2012 Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 Could phantom power have been on in the channels you were patching to? I would think the A&H's outputs could handle it but maybe not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted December 3, 2012 Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 use a di when feeding a mixer to another mixer of unknown user intelligence. i am going to bet the issue has something to do with differential drive compared to impedance balanced drive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dega500 Posted December 3, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 Originally Posted by Vinny D Did you try sending your main out to your amps/speakers (not going through the house board)?How could you have mixed using your Aux 4 signal? you would have had no channel EQ control. I was about to try that when he ran his computer into the channel we were using and it all sounded fine so I just assumed at that point that it had something to do with our outputs outputs. Granted, I don't know how he patched the tunes into that channel. As far as channel EQ control goes, we try to use as little channel eq (or eq at all for that matter) as possible just to keep things simple. It is most effectively used on our drums and bass which we elected not to mic in the small venue we were playing. Honestly, at that point we were just happy not to be completely dead in water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dega500 Posted December 3, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 Originally Posted by trevcda Could phantom power have been on in the channels you were patching to? I would think the A&H's outputs could handle it but maybe not. I hadn't thought of that. I was on stage manning our board and couldn't see what he had going on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dega500 Posted December 3, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 Originally Posted by Coaster use a di when feeding a mixer to another mixer of unknown user intelligence. i am going to bet the issue has something to do with differential drive compared to impedance balanced drive I truly hope that means user error or oversight and that there is still hope that I haven't fried our board. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted December 3, 2012 Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 IIRC the auxes are not the same drive as the mains so they for the most part function the same but operate different. hook up your board to your own stuff and test it. i have seen issues with hooking up mixers to phantom power and having the outputs not work until phantom was disengaged by my experience with that is limited Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dega500 Posted December 3, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 Originally Posted by Coaster i am going to bet the issue has something to do with differential drive compared to impedance balanced drive Might the Aux. send experience the same incompatibility? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dega500 Posted December 3, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 I am going to drag our stuff off the trailer one night this week, hook it all up and give it a good run through. Thanks for all the suggestions! Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted December 3, 2012 Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 There are 2 possibilities that I can think of, the first is that phantom power on the club's console latched up the cross-coupled balanced drive outputs of your MixWiz. This is because of the potential for positive feedback on the servo cross coupling. It may or may not damaged the outputs of your MoxWiz. The scond possibility is that he used an adapter (or a bad cable) that opened up either pin 2 or (probably) pin 3 of the output of your MizWiz and the differential input of his console just amplified the common mode bleed. If he increased the gain a lot to make noise, and then the open connection reconnected, you would have had about 60dB of extra, unanticipated gain. This would not have been noticeable on your aux outputs because pin 3 is referenced to ground This is unlikely to damage your MixWiz but his speakers (especially the HF drivers) may not have been so lucky. Always, always, always use a properly level matched passive, transformer isolated interface (passive DI, isolation transformer) between the output of your console and ANYTHING that you do not have 100% control of. This is defacto standard in the world of real pro audio. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dega500 Posted December 3, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 3, 2012 "This is defacto standard in the world of real pro audio" This statement says a ton about me and my expertise! Live and learn I guess. Thanks for all the responses. I wont know what damage has been done 'till I get it all set back up. Wish me luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rbts Posted December 4, 2012 Members Share Posted December 4, 2012 I have a brand new Mix Whiz III also (well a couple of months old now) - and one night - for some reason - I could not get any signal out of the Main Mono Feed. We tried everything - but got nothing. Like you - we routed around this problem - and were just grateful to get through the night - which we did - just fine - with lots of compliments. The next day - when I got everything out to try to figure out just WTH was going on - presto - everything worked fine - and has continued to work fine ever since. Here's hoping YOU will have that same experience! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted December 4, 2012 Members Share Posted December 4, 2012 Originally Posted by Dega500 "This is defacto standard in the world of real pro audio"This statement says a ton about me and my expertise! Live and learn I guess.Thanks for all the responses. I wont know what damage has been done 'till I get it all set back up. Wish me luck! Your experience here may highlight why it is standard operating procedure to isolate our equipment from the real world and any idiots that might be attached to the other end of the cable going to the real world.(These comments are for others who may find themselves in questionable situations and want to protect themseves from damage) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dega500 Posted December 5, 2012 Author Members Share Posted December 5, 2012 Well, looks like I may have dodged a bullet this time. Mixer appears to be functioning properly through my own amps. Whew!!! Thanks for all info and advice! Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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