[Scott Dorsey]

Carey Carlan wrote:

Thanks as always, Scott. You didn't sell me until #4, where the political
aspect arises. This gig isn't paying much, so I'm going to get a cheap ART
splitter this time, take the direct out and let him suffer through the bad
xfmrs.

90% of the benefit of the splitter is political, and it's a huge benefit that
way.

I don't know what's inside the ART splitter, but if it's a bridging splitter
with a high-Z to low-Z transformer and a direct output with the transformer
bridged across it, then you don't have to worry about it. Only the PA guy
has to worry about it.

Anything wrong with just opening that box and replacing the crap inside
rather than starting fresh, other than not expanding the number of
channels?

Not at all, that's sort of how I would recommend beginning. Although, the
thing about the splitter is that you will wind up needing a lot of channels,
more than you ever expected because the PA folks will often be sloppy about
laying channels out on the board.

You can also probably rent a splitter for not too much money... call TAVS
and see if they have something available.

I personally like the splitters with 1:1:1 transformers rather than bridging
ones... that way all the outputs are isolated, nobody fights about who gets
the direct, and the phantom is provided at the splitter so there's less of
a chance of an accident with the guy at the direct-fed console shutting
phantom off accidentally. Other folks don't like them, because they want
to eliminate transformers as much as possible from the record signal path.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."