Insert / Direct Out from Mixer: TRS Wiring

I used to use the inserts on my 1640i Mackie Onyx. I didn’t want to hassle with the half plug in situation on the inserts, so I bought some short adaptor cords from Hosa, I think at B&H Photo. They have the tip to ring connection already so you just plug them into each insert, all the way in. The other end of the adaptor cord is a female quarter inch that uses either a TS or a TRS male plug from your snake. The other end of your snake of course is D-sub conector for the U-track The only thing I’m not sure about is if you can plug either a TS or a TRS quarter inch plug out of the adaptor cord. I think you could use either jack for that. I don’t know about your direct outs, whether they’re TS or TRS, but I have a unit by ART called a T8 that has 8 channels. It’s a transformer isolator, but the beauty of it is you have XLR plugs in and out on one side and Phone and RCA plugs both in and out on the other side. Aside from being a great hum eliminator, you could run an unbalanced phone plug in to one side and it comes out balanced on the XLR output side. Great unit, not too expensive, but of course their may be a cheaper way for you to deal with your issue. If your direct outs are TRS, then just buy a snake with D-subs on one end for the U-track and TRS plugs on the other end for your direct outs. I hope that helps and wasn’t too confusing. Marc

Yea, I think I get you on this. Man, those darn adaptor cords really went up. I think I paid about 4 bucks apiece when I bought them, but yea, you could, I guess just plug the jacks for the insert outs, plug em in half way, and hope no one messes with them, or do your own soldering tip to ring on the 8 cords going from the inserts. I hope I’m saying that right. Couldn’t you just leave the direct out plugs TRS and only solder the 8 other ones to the tip ring connection? Anyway, it sounds like you know what your doing and I don’t blame you for not wanting to pay 9 bucks a piece for those darn adaptor cords from Hosa. Good luck with it all. Marc.
P.s. Since your only running a short snake, you shouldn’t have any problem using unbalanced cables, I would think.

Have you tried the cables out that you just soldered with your direct outs as well as the inserts? I’m the guy who has the Hosa insert converter cables, but I don’t remember if they have the 200 ohm resister in them or not. I really don’t think they do, but as you say, they’re pretty steep priced to be buying say 8 of them or so.

As far as the distortion where you probably need to put a pad somewhere in line between your Tascam outs and your Utrack in’s. I think you can buy separate pad adaptors you could use for each cord, but again, it sounds like a lot of hassle and money. I’m really surprised your having such a hot signal from the Tascam. I have the 1640i Mackey Onyx and if anything, the signal is just barely hot enough. When I’m using my direct outs on the onyx, there’s enough volume for the Utrack but it seems like I have to turn it up pretty high. Seems there has to be a solution here somewhere. Marc.

You’re right about the Onyx. It has a firewire plug for the interface and I have used that to run right into one of my laptops to record on Cubase, but my computer crashed a couple of times, so I decided to not even use the Onyx and the laptop for now at least. What I’m doing now, is using 3 eight channel interfaces that run Toslink out of each of them into the new ADAT card I just bought for the Utrack 24. I ended up having to clock everything together with BNC plugs and my Black Lion clock, but now it all works well and I can pick and choose which channels on which interfaces I want to use to mike the different instruments on stage. So far so good and I also have another Utrack that I can use for either a backup or to add on to the channel count by syncing it together with the other one. Marc.

Question:[i]We are talking about recording live gigs right?
If yes, how do you get mic signals into each 8 channel interface? Do you use some sort of XLR snake “splitter” So your interfaces and the FOH mixer both get the signal, or do you tap into the FOH mixer? If the latter, what’s the use of adding one layer of 3 interfaces instead of tapping a couple of snakes from the FOH Insert points with a modified TRS snake?
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Answer:I haven’t done too much recording yet, but what I have done and plan to do next weekend, is I do use a mike splitter. I have an ART 8 channel mike splitter, that is very clean and I just split the mikes going into the PA on stage, since the band doesn’t have a sound man, and then I give the direct split to the Pa and I take the Isolated split and run it into a snake and run the snake back to my recorder and interfaces. That way, I have my own feed from each individual vocal mike and they have theirs for their own personal volume adjustment. Of course I also mike each instrument or us a DI on the base in order to capture everything. Marc.

Phatstadt, I do want to congratulate you on getting the snake to work like you want it too, and getting a handle on that pesky overload on your preamps. That’s good news and when you get that second snake, it’ll give you 16 tracks, it sounds like, in case you need it. Marc.