[Scott Dorsey]

George's Pro Sound Company wrote:
let me go way out on the limb here
and risk the wrath of the pro recording community
for under 100$ you can make a dozen 1 female to two male passive splitters

this will give you "your own" feed to your mixer

This is true, and if all the system grounds are correct, everything will
work fine doing this.

There are two problems with this method. First of all, not all the PA systems
you deal with will have proper ground configurations. In fact, most of them
won't. The second problem is that there will be political arguments about
whose responsibility problems are when they turn up. The transformer splitter
avoids the arguments.

You will encounter PA guys who just plain won't put a passive-Y in front
of their system. It doesn't matter if it is going to cause a problem or
not, they won't even try it.

I don't know of a mic today that reacts badly to a simple 2 way passive
split.

This is because most inexpensive consoles today have fairly high-Z inputs
and it's more common that they don't load the mike _enough_ rather than
that they load it too much. You may even find that the mike (especially
something like an SM-57) sounds _better_ with the double load on it.

Impedance matching used to be the main argument for the splitter, and it's
seldom a good argument today. I mean, we do sometimes encounter transformer
isolated consoles with low-Z inputs, but not s often.

I invested heavily in iso's and broadcast splits andhave never found the
investment was worth it
with Jensens at around 60$ each it got real expensive real fast

Yes, I think the big deal with the original poster was that he only needed
a couple channels. It helps if you're just pulling vocals off rather than
grabbing all the sends off the board.

I have not found anyone yet who can tell what was done through the iso's and
what was done on a simple passive split snake

Frankly, this is an argument in favor of the isolation system you bought...
most of the isolation transformers degrade the sound somewhat.

I can count on one hand with four fingers left the number of times I have
needed the ground lifts on my Radial Convertible big concert snake.

Yeah, but it sure saved your rear when you did, didn't it? That's the
thing about stuff like splitters.... sometimes you don't need it, but
when you do, you're really glad you do.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[George's Pro Sound Company]

"Scott Dorsey" wrote in message
...
George's Pro Sound Company wrote:
let me go way out on the limb here
and risk the wrath of the pro recording community
for under 100$ you can make a dozen 1 female to two male passive
splitters

this will give you "your own" feed to your mixer

This is true, and if all the system grounds are correct, everything will
work fine doing this.

There are two problems with this method. First of all, not all the PA
systems
you deal with will have proper ground configurations. In fact, most of
them
won't. The second problem is that there will be political arguments about
whose responsibility problems are when they turn up. The transformer
splitter
avoids the arguments.

I guess I haven't encountered that issue as it's "my" pa system

You will encounter PA guys who just plain won't put a passive-Y in front
of their system. It doesn't matter if it is going to cause a problem or
not, they won't even try it.

I guess you would need a way to know this in advanceor put up yur own mics,
the level of PA your talking about (where the operator even knows a passive
from a Iso split) is well beyond the "average pa" I feel the op was
addressing.

I don't know of a mic today that reacts badly to a simple 2 way passive
split.

This is because most inexpensive consoles today have fairly high-Z inputs
and it's more common that they don't load the mike _enough_ rather than
that they load it too much. You may even find that the mike (especially
something like an SM-57) sounds _better_ with the double load on it.

Interesting.

Impedance matching used to be the main argument for the splitter, and it's
seldom a good argument today. I mean, we do sometimes encounter
transformer
isolated consoles with low-Z inputs, but not s often.

I invested heavily in iso's and broadcast splits andhave never found the
investment was worth it
with Jensens at around 60$ each it got real expensive real fast

Yes, I think the big deal with the original poster was that he only needed
a couple channels. It helps if you're just pulling vocals off rather than
grabbing all the sends off the board.

I have not found anyone yet who can tell what was done through the iso's
and
what was done on a simple passive split snake

Frankly, this is an argument in favor of the isolation system you
bought...
most of the isolation transformers degrade the sound somewhat.

I can count on one hand with four fingers left the number of times I have
needed the ground lifts on my Radial Convertible big concert snake.

Yeah, but it sure saved your rear when you did, didn't it?


50 channels at 12$ per channel for ground lifts= 600$ for teh ground lifts,
a single 15$ gl adapter would have done the job just fine, or I would simply
cut the ground at the split, my point is it was alot of money for something
that is rarely needed and when needed there are many work arounds that are
under 20$ or even free

I even bought the scanner that searches for the signature noise of a ground
problem and lights a led on thechannel that is giving trouble, before line
check
a 1200$ option I used maybe 6 times

That's the
thing about stuff like splitters.... sometimes you don't need it, but
when you do, you're really glad you do.
--scott

George

[[email protected]]

On 2008-11-20 said:
I guess you would need a way to know this in advanceor put up yur
own mics, the level of PA your talking about (where the operator
even knows a passive from a Iso split) is well beyond the "average
pa" I feel the op was addressing.
Probably so, but if he encountered me at one of his gigs I"d
insist. But, I"m the guy either doing a mix for broadcast
or recording these days.
THat's why I have a bunch of channels of xformer split with
ground lifts. tHat way, I know what I'e got when I want to
take a feed from mics the sr folks already have up.



Richard webb,
replace anything before at with elspider

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--- Benjamin Franklin, NOvember 1755 from the
Historical review of Pennsylvania

[Scott Dorsey]

George's Pro Sound Company wrote:

I guess I haven't encountered that issue as it's "my" pa system

Running both the PA system and the recording system together eliminates
90% of the problems out there. Most of them are political ones anyway,
like whether we use the mike that the PA guy wants or the mike the recording
guy wants.

In fact, if you are running both, there's no reason you can't just use
a PA board with direct outputs to feed the recording rack and save yourself
a whole lot of complexity.

You will encounter PA guys who just plain won't put a passive-Y in front
of their system. It doesn't matter if it is going to cause a problem or
not, they won't even try it.

I guess you would need a way to know this in advanceor put up yur own mics,
the level of PA your talking about (where the operator even knows a passive
from a Iso split) is well beyond the "average pa" I feel the op was
addressing.

Could be.

I invested heavily in iso's and broadcast splits andhave never found the
investment was worth it
with Jensens at around 60$ each it got real expensive real fast

If you decide you want to sell some of those, let me know.

50 channels at 12$ per channel for ground lifts= 600$ for teh ground lifts,
a single 15$ gl adapter would have done the job just fine, or I would simply
cut the ground at the split, my point is it was alot of money for something
that is rarely needed and when needed there are many work arounds that are
under 20$ or even free

This is absolutely true.

On a lot of this stuff I like to build it in 8-channel blocks, that way
you can mix and match. The advantages of having all the grounding stuff
switchable is that it's very quick to flip switches around and change the
grounding configuration when you're in a rush. You pay for that speed.

I also have encountered some really, really scary PA rigs and some scary
backline stuff plugged into PA rigs, and it makes me want as much isolation
as I could possibly get sometimes. I'm talking about measuring 60V ground
fault currents on a cable shield. That goes beyond hum and into potential
injury.

I even bought the scanner that searches for the signature noise of a ground
problem and lights a led on thechannel that is giving trouble, before line
check
a 1200$ option I used maybe 6 times

That seems a little bit over the top, yeah. But you might have noticed that
I am not a fan of automation anyway.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."