Need to record two channels, have one aux send. XLR Y-cable okay?

[wesg]

I'm doing a "board recording" for a solo artist friend of mine tomorrow night. We haven't really had a chance to try anything ahead of time, as he lives in Ireland and I live in Canada.

 

Anyhow, he has an Avid MBox which I'll be using to grab raw audio with Audacity. He can do the post work back in Ireland.

 

The board is a Mackie1402VLZ3. One aux send is used for the powered monitor, so there is one left. He has a dynamic microphone for vocals, a condenser microphone for his guitar and Bodhran (never played simultaneously) and a pickup in the guitar.

 

My thoughts are to mix the pickup and condenser out to AUX2 and record that one channel; then split the vocal mic with a Y-cable, sending one side to the Avid and one to the mic pre on the board.

 

Does that make sense? Would I be smarter to put the mic into the Avid and use the monitor out from the Avid into the board?

 

My main priority is to not risk the live performance. It is more important to have a glitch-free performance than anything else.

 

Thanks,

Wes

[wesg]

Hm. Another solution crosses my mind: I could use a channel insert on channel one to get the microphone signal, right? Short tip and ring together, and take that signal out? ... It will be unbalanced but I could keep it a short run. Hmm.....

[agedhorse]

Yes, an XLR splitter Y cable is a fine choice for this.

[wesg]

Thanks, Andy. Just finished making one up. (Not sure I can find a commercially-made one in town tomorrow)

[wesg]

Oh oh, I knew something was bothering me.

 

What happens if the mixer has phantom power turned on? Is that going to blow up the Avid MBox recording interface? I'm guessing I should NOT turn on the MBox's phantom power too.

 

Wes

[agedhorse]

Mixer's output won't have phantom power present.

 

Be SURE the phantom power is off on the M-Box interface. I always feed everything that goes to the outside world through an audio isolation transformer so that I don't have to worry what somebody might do with phantom or other things.

[Audiopile]

 

Oh oh, I knew something was bothering me.

 

What happens if the mixer has phantom power turned on? Is that going to blow up the Avid MBox recording interface? I'm guessing I should NOT turn on the MBox's phantom power too.

 

Wes

 

Your board shouldn't have phantom power fed to the aux sends, or inserts, or anything else but mic inputs. You could check it with a meter though... just to make sure.

[Unalaska]

Turn off phantom power on the Avid device, use phantom on the mixer. You can use the insert, unbalanced cable plugged into the first click works great. Unbalanced is just fine. Make sure the mixer and avid are plugged into the same wall outlet (power strip).

[wesg]

Right -- if I use a Y-cable on the microphone, I *will* have phantom power being sent to the input of the M-box. That mixer can't turn phantom off for individual channels, and it needs to be on for the condenser.

 

So it looks like the better choice is to use the channel insert to get the signal from the microphone. The other two channels will be mixed to aux 2, and aux 1 is being used by the monitor.

 

One of these days, I'm going to buy some audio isolation transformers. I don't normally bump into projects like this, but I really should be better prepared "just in case". My friends do all kinds of crazy crap and get away with it, but since I know better, I'm likely the one who will let the magic smoke out, LOL.

 

Unalaska, thanks for the reminder about the one-click. I have a TS->TRS cable with ring and tip shorted, but it's quite short. I tested that last night with my own mixer and it worked fine. If the box needs to be further away from the MBox than that cord allows, I'll use a good quality instrument patch cord at one click.

 

Thanks,

Wes

[mikekars]

I had the 1604VLZ and found those 1/4 inch plugs to provide pretty unreliable connections when inserted just to the first click. Any kind of movement of the cable could cause a dropout. The connection even feels shaky and unreliable. When I had several channels set up this way it seemed like there was always at least one channel that got some pops on the recording. I suppose this is done all the time though so maybe it was just me or my Hosa 1/4 inch plugs were built to sloppy tolerances.

 

To alleviate the problem I made some special TRS to TR patch cables. It is a simple unbalanced connection so you only need a two wire cable. The plug that goes to receiving device (your Mbox) is a regular TR plug. The insert plug at the mixer must be a TRS plug. The whole "trick" is to short the Tip and Ring together on the mixer TRS plug. Then you can plug that TRS connector all the way in and it still just works as a tap of that channel's signal. The fully seated TRS plugs felt and worked much better for me and were really easy to make. Of course you have clearly label these cables so they are not mistaken for anything "normal".

 

Your XLR Y cable would probably work better for you. In my case my recording device needed a line level signal so an XLR split at the mic input wouldn't work.

[wesg]

Thanks for the advice, all.

Recording got mixed results. The talent decided he wanted to use the venue's Sampson box mixer rather than the Mackie I had planned on using, so phantom power was a non-issue as the Sampson didn't have the option. He put a battery in the condenser instead. I recorded the vocals with a Y-cable and got wonderful quality. Unfortunately, I did not have fast enough USB transfer so there are blips throughout much of the recording, ruining it. ..... and most of the third set had another problem: as the night wore on, he turned up and started to juust clip the box mixer's input on the guitar, which I was taking out of Aux 2. I couldn't fix it at the show, even though I could hear it.

 

Hopefully he'll let me take another stab at this for his next show. I'd really like to make him some nice recording raw materials.

 

Wes