- Why XLR usually outperforms TRS for reliable, balanced connections
- How to “exercise” or clean jacks to stop intermittent dropouts
- How the Return jack on the Audient iD bypasses the preamp (and why the Send is half-normalled)
- Why patchbays and inserts can be both lifesavers and headaches
- The simple logic of binary reduction for solving audio mysteries fast
- TriBooth — use code TRIPAP200 for USD $200 off your TriBooth
- Austrian Audio — Making passion heard.
00:00:00
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
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Get started.
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Welcome.
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Hi.
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Hi.
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Hi.
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Hello, everyone.
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To the Pro Audio Suite.
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These guys are professional.
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Line up, man.
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Here we go.
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And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
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Thanks to Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
00:00:38
And Tribooth, time to get the code.
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T-R-I-P-A-P 200.
00:00:42
That will get you 200 US dollars off
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your Tribooth.
00:00:46
Now, I've been fiddling around and finding some
00:00:48
weird shit going down in my studio when
00:00:51
recording through the Grace M101.
00:00:54
Some days I come in and I'm lucky
00:00:56
to peak at minus 20.
00:00:57
And then, like this morning when I was
00:00:59
recording, it came in at minus 10.
00:01:02
So I've done nothing different.
00:01:04
I've changed no levels.
00:01:05
I always stand pretty well in the same
00:01:07
place.
00:01:08
And I wouldn't have thought the microphone would
00:01:10
be sensitive to that kind of like 12
00:01:13
dB just by being a couple of inches
00:01:16
in a different spot from the microphone.
00:01:19
But I could be wrong.
00:01:21
Anyone got any ideas?
00:01:22
I would guess an analog pot.
00:01:26
A failing analog pot.
00:01:28
Maybe.
00:01:29
This is like click and clack.
00:01:31
Yeah.
00:01:32
So when you lose one leg of a
00:01:34
balanced fader or a balanced signal...
00:01:37
That's 6 dB.
00:01:38
That's 6 dB.
00:01:39
Yeah, you lose 6.
00:01:40
Yeah, not 10.
00:01:41
But maybe he's not calculating exactly right.
00:01:44
Yeah.
00:01:45
But would that vary and go up and
00:01:47
down?
00:01:47
So one day it's louder and the next
00:01:48
day it's quieter?
00:01:49
Yeah, depending on humidity or...
00:01:51
Well, intermittent cable.
00:01:53
Like you're getting the balanced signal and then
00:01:55
you're not getting the balanced signal.
00:01:56
So one day it's coming through with all
00:01:59
the two legs of the balanced signal and
00:02:02
it's loud.
00:02:03
And then another day the cable gets moved
00:02:04
just enough, if it's a bad cable, that
00:02:06
you're only getting one leg of the balanced
00:02:07
signal and it's not loud.
00:02:10
This is a good time to talk about
00:02:11
tip ring sleeve connector problems.
00:02:14
The reason why I like really true pro
00:02:17
gear for road and production, rarely uses quarter
00:02:21
inch plugs on.
00:02:23
They're almost always XLR.
00:02:25
Because the XLR jack design is dramatically better
00:02:29
at making a reliable contact.
00:02:32
The area of the pin that makes contact
00:02:35
with the socket is dramatically better than a
00:02:39
tip ring sleeve or any kind of a
00:02:41
jack.
00:02:42
The jacks only have one tiny point of
00:02:44
contact.
00:02:45
There's like a little metal finger, right?
00:02:46
And it just touches the edge of the
00:02:49
sleeve, you know?
00:02:51
And if that exact point builds up any
00:02:54
corrosion, you've all of a sudden lost that
00:02:56
signal.
00:02:57
So that's a part of your balanced signal.
00:02:59
And that would cause the signal to drop.
00:03:01
But it could come back if like, I
00:03:04
don't know, you bump the desk or something
00:03:08
moved.
00:03:08
Or you spin the jack or something.
00:03:10
So yeah, so I was about to say,
00:03:11
easy cheap fix is you exercise your connectors.
00:03:15
I like to joke that I'm exorcising them.
00:03:19
But you're exercising the demons out of your
00:03:23
jacks by twisting them around, exercising them.
00:03:27
So just literally, some people pull in, out,
00:03:30
in, out, in, out.
00:03:31
If that's your thing, go for it.
00:03:33
But I find that twisting them side to
00:03:36
side is just as effective, if not more
00:03:39
so.
00:03:39
Just twisting them, rotating them back and forth.
00:03:42
And you're burnishing the contact on the jack
00:03:46
and on the slug.
00:03:48
Yes.
00:03:50
Jack-a-sutra.
00:03:52
Yeah.
00:03:52
So you'll notice that that clean burnishes the
00:03:55
contacts.
00:03:57
And you'll probably hear, if you're monitoring the
00:04:00
input in your cans when you're doing this,
00:04:01
you'll probably hear static when you're doing it
00:04:04
at that time.
00:04:05
And if the static, if you keep twisting
00:04:07
it back and forth until the static goes
00:04:08
away completely, then you've done your job.
00:04:11
You've burnished the contact.
00:04:13
Yeah, contact cleaning spray is nice too.
00:04:16
But you don't always have that handy.
00:04:18
And so just a twist is a way
00:04:22
to go.
00:04:22
I learned a hard lesson when I had
00:04:24
my recording truck with quarter-inch patch bays.
00:04:27
And all the patch bays were quarter-inch
00:04:29
front and rear.
00:04:30
So there was a lot of quarter-inch
00:04:33
jacks going on, you know?
00:04:35
I mean, like tons.
00:04:37
And I just learned that that was a
00:04:38
really bad choice for a remote recording truck
00:04:41
because the thing's moving around, it's in different
00:04:43
temperatures and humidities, and those things were unreliable.
00:04:48
And also quarter-inches don't grab very well.
00:04:50
No, they didn't have an extremely…
00:04:52
Like you pull on that patch bay a
00:04:53
little bit and the back of it pulls
00:04:55
like slightly halfway out and now you've lost
00:04:58
a contact or some stupid thing like that.
00:05:01
Every time I got to a gig, I
00:05:02
learned to reach around the back of the
00:05:04
rack.
00:05:05
Shove everything in.
00:05:06
And I would reach around and I would
00:05:08
push every jack back into the back of
00:05:10
the panels just to be 100% sure
00:05:12
I didn't have a bad contact.
00:05:15
But that's where I learned.
00:05:15
I was like, oh, that's why they have
00:05:17
punch-down blocks and these less convenient connectors.
00:05:23
The worst quarter-inch design, and I'll name
00:05:25
them, Behringer's got a patch bay, quarter-inch
00:05:27
patch bay, and the half-normaling, normal, fully
00:05:29
normal switch is on the top.
00:05:32
And there are these little slider switches that
00:05:34
move really easily.
00:05:36
And so it's in a rack and you're
00:05:38
trying to pull this thing out and you're
00:05:40
trying to pull it out in such a
00:05:41
way that you don't pull every jack out
00:05:42
the back of it.
00:05:43
So inevitably what you do is you put
00:05:45
your hands behind it and you try to
00:05:47
push it out from the jacks behind, but
00:05:48
you put your hands down there and then
00:05:50
you move every single normaling switch.
00:05:52
And you're like, oh my goodness, that's bad.
00:05:56
I don't even, like, you have to go
00:05:57
back to your design and figure out which
00:05:58
one went where, worst designer.
00:06:01
Well, I mean, I was asking Audient, before
00:06:03
we hit record, I was asking Andrew if
00:06:05
the plus 10 mode was engaged.
00:06:06
So apparently, I'm looking at the console, a
00:06:09
screenshot of the Audient ID console, and I'm
00:06:14
not seeing that plus 10 feature.
00:06:16
But maybe it's the smaller ID 4 or
00:06:19
one of the other products.
00:06:20
But I know for a fact, some of
00:06:21
the Audients have a plus 10 boost.
00:06:25
So that can get in your way too.
00:06:27
So another thing we talked about is the
00:06:31
fact that, and this is a little bit
00:06:33
getting in the weeds, because it really only
00:06:34
involves this interface.
00:06:38
What's unique about the Audient ID 44 and
00:06:41
the 22 and some others they make is
00:06:43
they have what's called a send and a
00:06:44
return jack.
00:06:45
And those are handy because now you can
00:06:48
insert audio through what's called the return jack
00:06:52
and bypass the internal preamp.
00:06:55
So that means you have one less point
00:06:57
of failure or another knob to fiddle with.
00:07:00
You just go from your external preamp into
00:07:03
return, which is also a balanced connection, by
00:07:06
the way, and you're bypassing a whole section
00:07:10
of the circuit.
00:07:11
The gain.
00:07:11
So you don't have to worry about, yeah,
00:07:13
another gain knob to worry about.
00:07:14
Yeah.
00:07:15
So that's something we're going to send you
00:07:18
home, Andrew, and have you report back on
00:07:21
the next show and tell us what fixed
00:07:24
it.
00:07:24
A, twisting the jacks, or B, connecting to
00:07:27
the return jack.
00:07:28
So George, curious, are those sends half normaled?
00:07:33
My understanding is they're half normal.
00:07:34
Can you plug into the send?
00:07:36
So if you plug into send, it's going
00:07:37
to interrupt the signal path.
00:07:40
No, it won't interrupt.
00:07:42
It will send it without interrupting it.
00:07:44
Correct.
00:07:44
It's half normal.
00:07:45
Yes, it's half normal.
00:07:47
What he's explaining.
00:07:48
So it's like a Y.
00:07:49
Yeah, the send jack on the back is
00:07:51
sort of like a splitter.
00:07:53
So if you have a mic plugged into
00:07:55
an input, you can plug something into the
00:07:57
send jack that you want to send audio
00:07:59
to.
00:08:01
Now, I used to use these occasionally as
00:08:04
a phone patch.
00:08:05
Like a direct out.
00:08:06
Yeah, just to send the mic preamp out
00:08:08
to a phone hybrid or an ISDN box
00:08:12
or something else you have to send the
00:08:13
audio to.
00:08:15
Kind of handy.
00:08:16
I'll give you the funny trick.
00:08:18
So the same send return when it's TRS,
00:08:21
so all on one jack, and so the
00:08:22
separate send returns?
00:08:24
Yeah, that's a different thing we're describing.
00:08:26
Right.
00:08:26
With the old Mackies, I think they reversed
00:08:28
the send and the return so that you
00:08:30
could purposely plug the quarter inch jack halfway
00:08:33
in, not break the signal, and get a
00:08:37
direct out.
00:08:37
Yeah, that's right.
00:08:38
I remember setting that up for people.
00:08:41
Another cool hack with those insert jacks on
00:08:43
the Mackie boards is my dad helped me
00:08:47
build these little mic mute speaker mute boxes.
00:08:50
And so they had one quarter inch cable
00:08:53
that went into the insert, and then they
00:08:55
had a pair of quarter inch ins and
00:08:57
outs for the monitor's amp.
00:08:58
So between the input and the output to
00:09:00
the speakers.
00:09:02
And so when you flick the switch in
00:09:03
one position, the monitors were muted, but the
00:09:07
signal would pass through the send return jack.
00:09:09
You flick the switch, and it would cut
00:09:12
the signal to the microphone, cutting off your
00:09:15
mic, and turn on the speakers.
00:09:17
Does that remind you of anything?
00:09:19
Radio broadcast people?
00:09:21
A few things, maybe.
00:09:23
Yes, it does.
00:09:24
Yeah, he did that with an insert jack?
00:09:26
Yeah, yeah.
00:09:27
I still have a couple of these boxes
00:09:29
laying around.
00:09:30
I will actually have to listen to our
00:09:32
episode again and listen to that again to
00:09:34
follow that, because I was not totally following
00:09:37
that.
00:09:39
So just to really quickly summarize, there's a
00:09:41
quarter inch, the back of the box my
00:09:43
dad would make, has five quarter inch jacks.
00:09:47
One of them is strictly for the insert
00:09:49
jack, and the other two are ins and
00:09:52
outs for the left and right monitor speakers.
00:09:55
So it goes between the monitor output of
00:09:59
the mixer, or the control room out, as
00:10:01
they call them on the Mackie, to your
00:10:02
speakers or your amps.
00:10:04
And then your insert cable, which is a
00:10:07
standard tip ring sleeve quarter inch balanced cable,
00:10:10
goes to the other jack.
00:10:12
It's an unbalanced insert cable, right?
00:10:14
It's technically unbalanced.
00:10:16
The cable is a balanced cable, but it's
00:10:19
doing two jobs, sending audio to and from
00:10:21
the jack.
00:10:22
It's a weird thing.
00:10:23
And so all you're doing is breaking the
00:10:26
connection between one set of jacks and the
00:10:29
other, depending on which position the switch is
00:10:31
in.
00:10:32
And that way you never have to worry
00:10:33
about your microphone feeding back with your monitor
00:10:35
speakers.
00:10:36
So whenever your mic is on, the monitors
00:10:38
are off, and vice versa.
00:10:41
So it was just a handy tool, and
00:10:43
it's what they use in radio station consoles
00:10:44
all the time, where the jack, you know,
00:10:47
hits their on button, and the big giant
00:10:49
speakers shut off the second they start talking.
00:10:52
You know, that's common.
00:10:53
So the switch was picking between the tip
00:10:54
and the sleeve?
00:10:56
Is that what it was switching between?
00:10:57
Yeah, I don't remember what electronically was going
00:10:59
on, but it was just breaking the connection.
00:11:02
So if you broke the connection between the
00:11:05
return, the signal wouldn't return back into the
00:11:07
board, and so it wouldn't pass a signal.
00:11:09
It was just dead.
00:11:10
Yeah, wouldn't go to the speakers.
00:11:12
Yep.
00:11:12
So that was a fun little project.
00:11:15
Talk about a tangent.
00:11:18
And talk about a niche topic as well,
00:11:20
because the fact that I've got these external
00:11:23
preamps running through an ID44 is kind of
00:11:25
weird and kind of niche.
00:11:28
And you're just lucky.
00:11:30
Well, Andrew, the other thing you can try
00:11:32
is see if you get the same problem
00:11:34
with a different preamp.
00:11:36
So the whole thing with troubleshooting is always
00:11:38
to pick a point and change something and
00:11:41
see if the problem happens to the left
00:11:43
or right of where you changed something.
00:11:45
So if you change the preamp, and you
00:11:48
still get that gain problem changing, or, you
00:11:52
know, one day it's minus 10, the other
00:11:53
day it's plus 20, or whatever the difference
00:11:55
is, then you know the problem is not
00:11:58
your preamp and it's everything after the preamp.
00:12:00
So you've ruled out your microphone, and you've
00:12:03
ruled out the preamp.
00:12:04
Or if you use a different preamp, and
00:12:07
you still have the same problem, then you
00:12:09
know the problem is probably your microphone, because
00:12:11
it happened with a different preamp, and therefore
00:12:14
it's nothing from the preamp after.
00:12:15
So that's called binary reduction, and it's really
00:12:19
a great way to troubleshoot.
00:12:19
I didn't know it was called binary reduction,
00:12:21
good to know.
00:12:22
I just called it process elimination.
00:12:23
But yeah, you only want to change one
00:12:26
variable at a time.
00:12:27
That's the really crucial thing.
00:12:29
If you don't change one component at a
00:12:32
time...
00:12:32
But change something in the middle.
00:12:35
If you change something in the middle, you've
00:12:38
now isolated to half the thing.
00:12:40
If you start at the beginning, you have
00:12:42
to do all the variables.
00:12:43
But if you start in the middle, then
00:12:45
you only have to do half of them
00:12:47
on the next test.
00:12:48
And if you split that in half, you
00:12:49
only have to do half of those in
00:12:50
the next test.
00:12:51
So if you keep on splitting it in
00:12:53
the middle, you'll speed up your troubleshooting.
00:12:56
Beautiful.
00:12:56
Well, that's my wig sorted then.
00:12:58
That's a good one.
00:12:59
That's stuff you learn the hard way if
00:13:00
you're working in big studios with thousands of
00:13:02
connectors.
00:13:04
Yes.
00:13:05
Yeah, exactly.
00:13:05
When there's like 8 million points in between,
00:13:07
you're like, which one of these 80 is
00:13:09
it?
00:13:09
I'm going to pick point number 40.
00:13:11
Now I'll know if it's point 1 to
00:13:13
40 or 40 to 80.
00:13:15
Instead of starting at 1 and going through
00:13:17
everything linearly.
00:13:18
Interesting.
00:13:19
Good point.
00:13:21
I hope that helps.
00:13:22
Well, that's interesting because the reason with the
00:13:24
ID44 that I went for TRS was because
00:13:27
if I'd gone XLR, then I'd be going
00:13:29
using what I thought.
00:13:31
Go back to what I was getting at.
00:13:33
I thought if I use an XLR into
00:13:35
the ID44, I'd be using the internal preamp,
00:13:39
hence went for the DI with the TRS.
00:13:43
The preamp still works, which is kind of
00:13:46
annoying.
00:13:47
I was hoping I was bypassing it.
00:13:49
But if I go into the return on
00:13:50
channels 1 and 2.
00:13:52
It's so interesting.
00:13:54
Each company has a different...
00:13:55
If it's the line in, it's still hitting
00:13:56
that preamp.
00:13:57
Yeah.
00:13:57
Each company has a different opinion on how
00:13:59
to do that.
00:14:01
Like the Apogee Duet, weirdly, didn't do it
00:14:04
that way.
00:14:04
And it made me scratch my head more
00:14:06
than one time when I plugged in a
00:14:08
quarter inch thinking that was the line in.
00:14:11
And that was not the line in.
00:14:12
It was the guitar or instrument in.
00:14:15
Oh, it was the low Z in.
00:14:18
Yeah, you had to use the XLR as
00:14:20
the line in.
00:14:21
And then there was a setting in the
00:14:22
software inside their console that would switch it.
00:14:26
No, it was like literally not just a
00:14:28
pad, I don't think.
00:14:29
Well, maybe it was.
00:14:30
But it would switch modes and then it
00:14:33
was a line input.
00:14:34
But it was not logical to me at
00:14:37
all.
00:14:37
And to make matters worse, I rigged up
00:14:39
a piece of gear for somebody a couple
00:14:41
of weeks ago that's an audio video capture
00:14:43
device.
00:14:44
And it had two mic inputs, XLR and
00:14:47
quarter inch.
00:14:48
They were reversed.
00:14:50
The XLR was line in, the quarter inch
00:14:53
was the mic in.
00:14:55
And I was like, who in the hell
00:14:57
designed this thing?
00:14:57
Is phantom power out a quarter inch?
00:14:59
Is sending phantom power out a quarter inch?
00:15:01
That's definitely not.
00:15:02
No, it didn't have phantom power.
00:15:04
It didn't even have phantom power.
00:15:06
That speaks to the level of gear.
00:15:08
Yeah, well, that's the problem with video gear
00:15:11
that adds audio.
00:15:13
And it's made for corporate users.
00:15:15
So it was like a $1 piece
00:15:17
of gear.
00:15:18
It was expensive.
00:15:19
And yet it had those two reversed and
00:15:22
no phantom power.
00:15:23
So we still had to use a Rodecaster
00:15:25
mixer to give it a proper mic input.
00:15:28
It was a crazy discovery that I did
00:15:31
not think to read the manual because, you
00:15:34
know, you sort of assume, you know.
00:15:38
I mean, these days phantom power is like
00:15:40
kind of assumed for.
00:15:42
You can buy a $30 USB interface with
00:15:44
phantom power, but this $1 device with
00:15:48
two mic inputs had no phantom power.
00:15:50
It was just, it just bizarre to me.
00:15:53
And yeah, so never assume and with in
00:15:56
doubt.
00:15:57
That just makes you want to go back
00:15:58
to the design meeting for that one.
00:16:00
Yeah, RTFM, read the freaking manual.
00:16:03
What's that?
00:16:04
What's a manual?
00:16:04
Is that like a car you drive a
00:16:06
manual?
00:16:07
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:16:10
It's got a dog leg.
00:16:12
The dog leg is called no phantom power.
00:16:16
Yeah, exactly.
00:16:18
That dog leg is cocked in the end.
00:16:20
Well, that was fun.
00:16:21
Is it over?
00:16:23
The Pro Audio Suite.
00:16:24
With thanks to Tribooth and Austrian Audio.
00:16:27
Recorded using Source Connect.
00:16:29
Edited by Andrew Peters.
00:16:31
And mixed by Robbo.
00:16:32
Got your own audio issues?
00:16:34
Just ask Robbo.com.
00:16:35
With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
00:16:37
Don't forget to subscribe to the show and
00:16:39
join in the conversation on our Facebook group.
00:16:42
To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or
00:16:44
just say g'day, drop us a note at
00:16:46
our website, theproaudiosuite.com.