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Garth wrote: Fri Oct 22, 2021 1:41 pm

Kniferide wrote: Thu Oct 21, 2021 3:44 pm Short answer: A Y cable and a Passive splitter do the exact same thing, and if your DI is Passive, the same thing the 2 TS jacks on the DI do.

Could you elaborate on this? I don't own a ts-to-two-more-ts Y cable, but was always under the impression that this is bad because of noticeable signal loss - which is why an active ABY pedal is used if you're doing two amps, or the old Boss TU-2 trick....but I've certainly plugged my bass into passive DIs and not noticed any signal loss there.

If you were to draw a schematic of the signal path of a Passive Splitter box, a Y Cable, and what the Input/Throughput of a DI look like on paper, the signal paths are identical. When you plug into a DI you aren't Splitting the signal, just adding a second cable that you are moving your signal through in series and taping into a transformer off of the patch point. Their actually is a tiny but of signal loss, but it can be mostly transparent. Where the "all becomes the same thing" is where Cakes was asking if he should use a Y cable instead of the throughput on the DI in a configuration where his bass is split to the amp and to the DI using the Y. This signal path is really the same because you can think of the 2 jacks on the DI as a tiny Y cable. A buffered Splitter like a pedal or any other active splitter maintains the signal strength between the splits and each thing you are splitting the signal to should see a consistent load from the buffer.
Its all just a Y cable until you put electronics in it

Thank you for that explanation!