Balanced To Unbalanced, technical studio hardware Options

[lol Williams]

Can you help me

I have just bought an Akai mfc 42 filter I want to run the outs of my pro tools 888 into it!Both pieces are on my patch bay.
There is no mention if the inputs on the akai are Unbalanced or Balanced im assuming they are the Aforementioned,on the web site it says they accept Max of 16 db does that mean i can go in balanced!

My original plan was to unbalance one end of some balanced patch cables,which from what ive read will work however i need to know if the outputs on my 888 are fully floating?I dont have a clue what that means!Anyway maybe someone could help me and give us a tip on how to do these patch leads too?

Thanks

Lol

[Young_Blade]

sorry I'm not the one to help ya but I'f got a question to you about the akai mfc 42, I would like to know what kind of a filter it is? is it able to remove sounds from a song so I can pick out the sounds that I like?? please help me.. thank you!!

[lepetitmartien]

The Akai mfc42 is a copy of the Sherman Filterbank, save it's less agressive and fully MIDIfied.

I don't know for its outpouts though, should be on Akai specs somewhere (if you can decipher things on japanese company sites… I'm always wondering how they hide stuff)

[Richard Trier]

Hi there!

I'm a proud MFC Owner. I cannot recommend this filter bank enough, its awesome. it has inputs for 1/4", rca and phono too (so you can plug your turnatble straight in). Becauseits all analogue its fat as hell and pretty much sounds awesome. it has 2,4,6 and 8 pole filter (on mono side) which can be modulated (cut off and resonance) with the usual waveforms. which brings me to the outputs, it allows you to have a stereo input and mono running symultaneously but mixes its outs to a stereo pair as rca and 1/4".
In regard to your question as to whgat sort of filter it is, it can be in lowpass, band pass, high pass and notch configuartion. as a rough guide:
lowpass makes it sound bassy by cutting off the top end,
high pass is the opposite (makes it sound kinda tinny)
band pass only the bit in the middel (that wah wah pedal sound)
and notch, which makes a phasing effect when modalted)
Its not a parametric or multiband filter, so not good for subtle eqing, great for crazy sounds, but smooth as well. probably not good if you want to say remove someone voice, i think you need a pirece of software for that.
I believe its not being made any more so you can find it quite cheaply, i got mind for £145, less than half retail, about 6 months ago. In my opinion its the phatest filter bank around. Look hard, and you will find..

RE: 888 interface: balanced outputs mean that they have a ground as well as a positive and negative (hence xlr cables have 3 pins). RCA and jack has just +ve and -ve. I would explain the working of it all but essentially you ae fine to forget about it until it become important to you (theres enough to worry about just writing and producing music). Just plug it in and go...!

..phew! that was a lot wasn't it? hope some of it makes sense!

[micahg]

Just a heads up on a more accurate definition of balanced vs. unbalanced connections.

A Balanced connection does not include an additional 'ground' as previously stated. A ground is found in any cable as it serves as a reference voltage for the signal. The third pin of a balanced connection is a copy of the audio signal, but opposite in polarity from the original. When these two signals reach the input device a component does a process called 'common mode rejection'. Through this process discards any similarities between the two signals. Being opposite polarity the original signal is maintained and any interference picked up along the cable is rejected.

That is a balanced cable, and a balanced connection. Connecting a balanced to an unbalanced device will obviously only see one of the audio sources (not the one of opposite polarity) and the ground and therefore the compatability is preserved, though some signal level is lossed.

Hope that helps out a bit. If you remember what a balanced connection actually contains, you will see the effects of combining two different systems.

This post has been edited by micahg: Wed 2 Jun 2004, 18:35