Home Page Forums Cymatic Audio Forum uTrack 24 Insert / Direct Out from Mixer: TRS Wiring

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  • #29645
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    just got the uTrack24 and really like it.
    As far as connecting to a mixer for recording, my band’s studio mixer has direct outs only on the first 8 inputs, and inserts for all others. For live gigs, our sound guy has his own mixer with inserts on all channels.
    I want to modify a DB25-TRS snake that would work for both types when fully inserted, as I do want to use the Mackie first click approach.
    I believe I would lose the balanced and downgrade to unbalanced, but my snake is 8ft long so I don’t really care.
    Is there a wiring / soldering solution that works for both types of mixer connection, insert or direct out? The standard literature on tapping into an insert is to simply connect the tip and ring of the insert TRS. Would this work for both requirements?

    #29651
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    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

    #29652
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    Thank you.
    The Hosa adaptors are $9 each, so would be more expensive that the entire 8 track DB25-TRS snake I bought. i don’t mind soldering and i don’t like adaptors, thence my wiring question.
    My issue is that the mixer I have to use for live gigs only has 8 Direct Outs (for which TRS untouched would work) but for inputs 9-16, the mixer only has Inserts. I think the solution to connect Tip to Ring on a TRS would work for both, and all I lose is the balanced cable on the Direct Outs, that would become unbalanced, but I don’t care. I want my modded snake to work equally with Direct Outs and Inserts.
    So my question was indeed to make sure that the mod would work for both type of tapping points on the mixer.

    #29653
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    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.

    #29654
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    I sort of know what I’m doing and I just did the soldering, but I want a solution that works for all mixers, and I don’t want to have two different snakes with different soldering depending whether I’ll be plugging into an insert or a direct out.. So my two unanswered questions are (a) does shorting the tip and ring work both for a direct out as well as an insert and (b) why did the Cymatic tech mention in an older post that you need to insert a 200 ohm resistor between the ring and the tip. I doubt the Hosa adaptors do the latter and no literature on this topic mentions it. If it is specific to the uTrack24, then it would be really great if the customer support tech would answer my questions on this forum or on the direct form I filled out. This seems like a very small company that doesn’t have adequate support staff to answer client questions on a timely basis from what I see so far. I suppose that was a given going in since not a mainstream brand. I guess I’ll wait to hear back as I doubt I can damage the unit.
    The other issue I have, which may be a deal breaker, is that the signal from my Tascam digital mixer is way too hot for the utrack24 but it is completely reasonable on my mixer and in Logic. So far i do not see any way to adjust the gain coming into the unit.

    #29672
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    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.

    #29673
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    Good timing as I just got back from the band rehearsal room. I didn’t even use the Direct Out and tapped straight into the Insert points. The modified TRS snake worked perfectly without breaking the main signal chain when fully inserted without any resistors between the tip and the ring. I ordered a second snake to go to 16 inputs and will solder the second one this week end. As far as levels, it is fine. I was able to connect the uTrack24 wirelessly (no WiFi required, only a simple Netgear router) to my iPad so I can see the levels on the great VU meter display via uRemote app and control the REC button. Very stable and ridiculously convenient, as I put my uTrack24 in a small rack that I intend to leave near our sound guy’s mixer during live gigs. He won’t have to do anything and I don’t care where he sets hisnfaders as i’ll Be tapping pre-fader.After adjusting the preamp gain on a couple of channels that were too hot I was fine. What is abundantly clear though is that the uTrack24 really HATES any signal above 0dB with horrendous digital clipping, so gotta give myself 6-9dB or cushion.
    So yeah, the modified TRS works great, and this recording system is going to be awesome. Now we need to play tight as a band…

    #29674
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    Doesn’t the Onyx have a 24/96 FireWire interface? Is it your studio mixer of live mixer or both?
    Curious why you would use a uTrack24 since all you need is to plug the FireWire into a MacBook and into Logic and record multitrack. In my case, my studio mixer is an awesome Tascam digital DM4800 with its own FireWire computer interface but it is absolutely not portable so I figured for live gigs I’d tap into the mixer of whichever sound guy we use as all mixer have inserts on each channel, and feed into a uTrack24. However, the Onyx 1640 seems fairly portable. Maybe same reason as me too big to move around.

    #29675
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    Not to sound creepy, but I checked out the manual of the Onyx 1640, and it appears to have two DB25 Recording Out connectors. So you don’t need any snakes nor TRS connectors, all you need is two DB25-DB25 cables and you got your 16 inputs into the uTrack24.

    #29677
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    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.

    #29678
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    You’re absolutely right. I first started out doing that and it worked well. What I did with that was just what you said, using the two 8 channel DB25 outs on the Onyx and running them straight into the Utrack. Then I would run the firewire out of the Onyx into one of my laptops and record in to Cubase 8.5. That way, I could have a backup, by using the Cubase and the recording onto the Utrack. It all worked pretty well, but I later decided to buy separate 8 channel interfaces, 3 of them and I bought an ADAT card for one of my Utracks and now I just run tracks into the Utrack and I could either hook up a computer along with all that through a device I have called an RME digiface or I can use my 2nd Utrack as a backup to the 1st Utrack. It’s just less stuff to carry to the club and less wires to hook up. Marc.

    #29679
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    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?

    #29680
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    Wow, you use a uTrack as a backup to a direct recording into Cubase, then a second uTrack as a backup to the first? Sounds extremely secure, I’m impressed.

    #29681
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    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?
    [/i]
    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.

    #29682
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    [b][i]phatstadt replied the topic: Insert / Direct Out from Mixer: TRS Wiring

    Question: Wow, you use a uTrack as a backup to a direct recording into Cubase, then a second uTrack as a backup to the first? Sounds extremely secure, I’m impressed.[/i][/b]

    Answer:Well, not quite that much. So far, I’ve either used the Cubase as my main recording and the Utrack as a backup, but since I started having some trouble with my computer and even the Cubase program stopping on me a few times, I just decided to use the Utrack to be my main recording, and use the 2nd utrack as my backup. I’d almost rather use the Cubase setup, if it was more stable, because I have more control of my volume and plus if I wanted to add any eq or anything else, I could with the Cubase, but I’m figuring I can just add that stuff in post production when I or my friend is mixing it. I may have a partner on this stuff. My friend is a very good engineer and has agreed to help me on some of these recording, especially in the mixing. He has very good ears and a lot more experience than I in mixing and recording.

    #29683
    Marc Trainor
    Participant

    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.

    #29697
    philippe hatstadt
    Participant

    Lazlo,

    I had not considered using the utrack24 as a playback engine but I am changing my mind.
    As far as the snakes that I modified to bridge the tip and ring, could I use those for playback purposes, by switching the DB25 from Input to Output in the back of the utrack24 while the TRS would still be plugged in the mixer Insert? Would that allow playback in the mixer?

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