VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Tom Test]

I’ve had many time-wasting frustrations trying to hook up my various bits of gear to my mixer, without success. It seems mixer manuals are made with the assumption that the owner is a musician, not a VO talent. They don’t have diagrams that tell me just what cables to insert where – and I’ve gone through a Mackie 1202, 1220 Onyx, Soundcraft Compact 4 and now a Yamaha MG 10/2. No manufacturer seems to use the same terms to label the various ins and outs, either! Aaaaaarrrrrgghh.

So I’ve put down the sledgehammer.... and come here for help. As a Guy, this is almost as damaging to my fragile male ego as asking for directions!. There are at least 2 things I’d really like to know how to do with my mixer and cannot figure out.

1) How to hook up a separate preamp (my ART MPA Gold tube or Speck 5.0 solid-state), with or without effects gear such as my FMR RNC compressor or Aphex 204 Aural Exciter, bypassing the mixer’s preamps so I can still use it to monitor myself through headphones.

2) How to hook up my JK Audio THAT-2 phone patch into my mixer.

I have set aside my Soundcraft Compact 4 because I’m pretty sure I can’t hook up a phone patch to it. I still have my Mackie 1220 that I was hoping to sell because of its huge footprint in my space-limited studio. I’m currently trying out the smaller Yamaha MG10/2 that I got cheaply on eBay. I’d prefer to use a smaller mixer, but if all this is much easier using the big honking Mackie, I’ll live with it.

I’m happy to forward a pdf of a user manual if it’ll help someone guide me through this. I’d even pay perfectly good money for some assistance.
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Best regards,
Tom Test
"The Voice You Trust"
www.tomtest.com

[David Swinehart]

Tom,
Perhaps I can help. Before the VO rig, I owned and operated various project studios over the last 12 years and have owned my share of Mackie's (1202, 1402VLZ, 24-8 ). If you want to talk offline, shoot me a PM, or I can do my best to post the solutions here.

There are a few different ways to accomplish what you've described... Assuming you want to use the FMR as an insert on your mic on the way in, your signal chain would look something like this:

Mic -> ART MPA -> 1/4" TRS to Channel 1 of Mixer <> TRS Send/Receive cable plugged into the "Insert" jack of Channel 1 connecting the RNP.

While it's possible to connect the ART to the Mixer using XLR, doing so will go into the Mixer's preamp circuit, so I'd suggest you stick with balanced 1/4" between the two.

On your phone patch, I would probably suggest you run the output of an ALT buss to the THAT-2, and the audio back from the THAT-2 into a separate line-in on the board. To route signal to the patch, just switch the mic channel (and/or computer output, if needed) to the ALT buss - that way, you could avoid a feedback loop.

**EDIT: On closer look at the specs for the MG 10/2, it doesn't look like there's an ALT buss option - you could use the AUX send as a workaround to this, connecting the AUX output from the mixer to the line input on the THAT-2.
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David Swinehart
an actual Dave
Kinetic Sound Labs

[Bill Campbell]

Tom:

I have and use the Yammy MG mixers.

Mic > Art > TRS phone plug into RNC input > RNC output TRS phone plug
1/2 click into insert of MG.
The half click into the insert bypasses the pre and or EQ in the mixer.

Email me if you have any troubles.

Bill

www.asapaudio.com
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www.asapaudio.com

[Lance Blair]

Tom...you and I have the same gear. What Bill says is correct, and is one of the ways I use my gear. Although, I was just checking, and even fully inserting a TRS into my 16/4 inserts bypasses the EQ and preamps of the Yamaha...maybe that's because I'm coming out of my balanced preamps and not out of the RNC?

Going line in to the Yamaha isn't horrible either if you're using the Speck: the Yamaha slows down the quick response of the Speck a touch which is actually a nice effect.

But this is how I run things:

Mics>Preamp>Echo Interface>Interface Outputs>Yamaha MG> Monitors, Headphones, and Aux out to Phone Patch etc.
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Skype: globalvoiceover
and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too!