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Danielle E Danielle E is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy

I keep seeing the Guitar Center $99 deal with 2 MXL mikes and the audio
buddy.

Can anyone tell me how the audio buddy preamp compares with the preamps
built in to my Motu Ultralight?


Thanks in advance

Danielle


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Mike Rivers Mike Rivers is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy

On Mar 8, 7:49 pm, "Danielle E" wrote:
I keep seeing the Guitar Center $99 deal with 2 MXL mikes and the audio
buddy.

Can anyone tell me how the audio buddy preamp compares with the preamps
built in to my Motu Ultralight?


What do you expect for free? (Guitar Center regularly sells that mic
pair for $99) The Audio Buddy is a very basic preamp designed to
connect a microphone to a computer sound card and get better
performance than the sound card's mic input (if it even has one).

But one very important difference is that the Ultralight contains the
audio interface to the computer, but the Audio Buddy is just a preamp.
You need a sound card to connect it to.

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Danielle E Danielle E is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy



I was thinking I could might be able to connect the Audio Buddy Outputs to
two of my currently unused line inputs on the Ultralight. (I am just not
sure how that would compare to using the built in Motu Ultralight microphone
preamps.

Not sure what would give me inferior results, equal or better.



Danielle

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Mar 8, 7:49 pm, "Danielle E" wrote:
I keep seeing the Guitar Center $99 deal with 2 MXL mikes and the audio
buddy.

Can anyone tell me how the audio buddy preamp compares with the preamps
built in to my Motu Ultralight?


What do you expect for free? (Guitar Center regularly sells that mic
pair for $99) The Audio Buddy is a very basic preamp designed to
connect a microphone to a computer sound card and get better
performance than the sound card's mic input (if it even has one).

But one very important difference is that the Ultralight contains the
audio interface to the computer, but the Audio Buddy is just a preamp.
You need a sound card to connect it to.



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Mike Rivers Mike Rivers is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy

On Mar 8, 8:44 pm, "Danielle E" wrote:
I was thinking I could might be able to connect the Audio Buddy Outputs to
two of my currently unused line inputs on the Ultralight. (I am just not
sure how that would compare to using the built in Motu Ultralight microphone
preamps.

Not sure what would give me inferior results, equal or better.


I suspect that it would be equal or less, not better, but there's only
one way to tell, and that's to compare it yourself. Buy one, hook it
up, and if you don't like it, return it. Given that this is Guitar
Center and they don't like to take back mics, leave the mics there,
and if you like it enough to keep it, come back and pick up your free
mics. Or if you really want to have a little fun, take the mics and
preamp, and if you want to take it back, tell them that you're
returning the preamp, but you'll keep the mics if they don't want them
back, since they're essentially free. (and hope they don't tell you
that you bought the mics and the preamp was free)


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[email protected] electronic_dave@hotmail.com is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy

Any issues of sound quality aside, don't plan on using the A.B. with
mics that require 48VDC phantom, because the A.B.'s phantom supply
folds up like a cheap camera when you try to draw any current from it.

I know this because someone gave me an A.B. a couple of years ago, and
during the course of "just for laughs" testing I found that the
phantom voltage drops significantly as soon as any current is drawn. I
put it on the shelf at that point and did no further testing.

--NewYorkDave



On Mar 8, 7:49 pm, "Danielle E" wrote:
I keep seeing the Guitar Center $99 deal with 2 MXL mikes and the audio
buddy.

Can anyone tell me how the audio buddy preamp compares with the preamps
built in to my Motu Ultralight?

Thanks in advance

Danielle





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Mike Rivers Mike Rivers is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy

On Mar 9, 10:39 am, wrote:
Any issues of sound quality aside, don't plan on using the A.B. with
mics that require 48VDC phantom, because the A.B.'s phantom supply
folds up like a cheap camera when you try to draw any current from it.


The original one only provided 30V, but they changed that. Maybe the
one that your buddy gave you a couple of years ago was an original
model.

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Michael R. Kesti Michael R. Kesti is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy

Mike Rivers wrote:

On Mar 9, 10:39 am, wrote:
Any issues of sound quality aside, don't plan on using the A.B. with
mics that require 48VDC phantom, because the A.B.'s phantom supply
folds up like a cheap camera when you try to draw any current from it.


The original one only provided 30V, but they changed that. Maybe the
one that your buddy gave you a couple of years ago was an original
model.


ALL phantom power circuits deliver less voltage as the current drawn from
them increases due to the 6K8 resistors in series with the supplies. I
wonder if NewYorkDave's definition of "folds up" is accounted for by those
resistors.

--
================================================== ======================
Michael Kesti | "And like, one and one don't make
| two, one and one make one."
mrkesti at hotmail dot com | - The Who, Bargain
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Mike Rivers Mike Rivers is offline
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Default Motu Ultralight - Audio Buddy

On Mar 9, 2:53 pm, "Michael R. Kesti" wrote:

ALL phantom power circuits deliver less voltage as the current drawn from
them increases due to the 6K8 resistors in series with the supplies. I
wonder if NewYorkDave's definition of "folds up" is accounted for by those
resistors.


I don't have the foggiest idea of what he was talking about. Sure, the
voltage at the microphone end of the resistors will drop. It's
supposed to. That's what Ohm's Law tells us, and different mics will
drop different amounts because not all mics draw the same current. But
the voltage on the POWER SUPPLY end of the resistors is supposed to
remain at 48V. Some do, some don't, and some (like the old Audio
Buddys and the modern Mackie Satellite) never were 48V.

The first generation Mackie 4-bus SR consoles had a really dinky
transformer winding for the phantom power supply and it wasn't capable
of providing full current (I keep forgetting what the DIN standard is
and David Satz keeps popping up to remind me) on more than about 4
channels before the resistance of the transformer winding (and I think
the series resistor that they put in there to protect the transformer)
became significant and the 6.8K resistors were no longer getting 48V.
That would be what I call "caving in."


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