hi, all of you electrical guys,
i'm forever and ever looking for a board.
Now i've found this tascam m3500 which looks great for me except one
thing, it is a -10 console and my recorder (tascam atr60-16) works balanced at +4dbu! What's your experience?
A guy at Tascamforums.com suggested that it needs just more gain when the signal is feeded to the recorder and when comes back to the mixer he told me that i could build some cables (or a patchbay) with resistors in it.
here is a page: http://www.uneeda-audio.com/pads/
What do you think about?
I know tascam made a kit with sub-d connection to make tepe returns balanced but not the direct outs (maybe because, like the guy at tascamforums.com said, just need more gain?)
would useful to check if the impedance of both gears match?
great greetings!
Omaroski

An Aphex 124a has helped me go between -10 and +4 with a decent sound quality and changable gain.

Those Rolls box and the like use transformers and totally changed the sound, unless you want that.

The Aphex is supposed to transformerless, but the sound does change somewhere.

Anyone know something that will match the signals with no audible difference?

XLR to 1/4 unbalanced cables form Sam Ash and the like don't work how I'd like and they have no gain control.

Cheers,

Frank

hi thank you for your answer, that's a good way i think but i would need 16 of those aphex! otherwise i found this: kramer FC-4208
here it is: http://kramer-us.com/indexes/item.asp?desc=69
still don't know the price, maybe they're 1000 euro each one and i can't afford them!
However i think this too would change the signal because of the presence of preamplifiers i guess.

http://www.ebtechaudio.com/lls-2des.html

The Line Level Shifter™ is designed to increase or decrease signal voltage (-10dBV and +4dBu) without adding noise. The Line Level Shifter™ also converts back and forth between balanced (+4dBu) and unbalanced (-10dBV) signals automatically. The Line Level Shifter™ also contains Ebtechs Hum Eliminator™ technology to break ground loops that cause AC hum.

you are a good guy! thanks
incredible, i've found i in italy too without make 1 month of google research!

i used a tascam m3500 with an otari mx-70 for 5 years and i never really had any noise or level issues. then again, the mx-70 might of had switches on each card to set the operating level- it's been so long since i touched that thing that i don't remember know.

at any rate, the only thing i had to worry about hooking it all up was just making sure the hot/cold pins on the xlrs were matching. which they weren't so much soldering was done.

don't know if that's useful or not, but there it is.

everything is helpful to me! so thank you,

i've heard that xlr on this board are wired with PIN 3 hot, someone told me that was not a problem unless you're not going to record a stereo track with different wiring like PIN 3 hot on one channel and PIN 2 hot on the other, so a phase inversion would occur.

however, my atr60 can't change his operating level.
does m3500 has phase reverse switch?

heh, if only it did!

i used to have a boatload of those metal xlr plug-in phase inverters around all the time. or i would use external preamps with a phase switch.
what a pain it was!

i do remember though when i was first setting everything up- i definitely had to switch the hot/colds to get any sort of signal at all through the tape returns. it could have just been my otari- but there definitely was a hot/cold mismatch and it definitely did matter.

morze wrote:heh, if only it did!

i used to have a boatload of those metal xlr plug-in phase inverters around all the time. or i would use external preamps with a phase switch.
what a pain it was!

i do remember though when i was first setting everything up- i definitely had to switch the hot/colds to get any sort of signal at all through the tape returns. it could have just been my otari- but there definitely was a hot/cold mismatch and it definitely did matter.

A lot of Otari gear (MX5050, MX-70) is pin 3 hot, unbalanced. So pin 3 would be the only one with audio. Pin 2 would have a matched output impedance to 3 to simulate a balanced source.

ah! no phase reverse? good! my seller (he who is trying to sell me this board) did not mention about it, he also told me this was a +4 console!

However, tascam atr 60-16 has the same kind of ''mismatched'' hot/cold connection.