Hooking up - Cables: Mono / Stereo

2 ways i tried hooking up my MPC with a multi-tracker:

a) MPC Stereo Out --> 2x Mono Jack to 1x Stereo Jack --> 1 Multi-Tracker In
b) MPC Stereo Out --> 2x Mono Jack to 2x Mono Jack --> 2 Multi-Tracker Ins (one jack in each slot)

Surprisingly for me there is a huge difference in sound:
Sound a) is no good at all, very much delay and reverb although i did not apply any. BAD!
Sound b) is the same i get on my headphones so i guess this should be the right one...

I tested the same with the ASR, same results.

What's the deal with these different types of cables? What's the reason a) does sound so horrible?

I was hoping i had the possibility use only one Input on my multi-tracker, so i would have more for other gear.

those jacks are mono jacks - they are single channel. you can only get around this by using a mixer.
combining two mono signals into one plug and feeding them back into a mono jack - is still only one channel. not to mention it is bad for your gear and degrades the signal just as you describe.

unless it specifically says it is a stereo jack (like headphones), it is likely a mono (single channel) jack.

the reason a sounds so horrible is there are two signals being squashed together and there might be some phase cancellation, which might sometimes have the effect of cancelling out yer center signal and only leaving the side information.

The crap sound via trying to use one of the multitrack inputs as stereo is because they're balanced inputs probably.

Balanced 1/4 plugs use the same TRS connectors as a stereo plug, but instead of left, right, ground, it's two polarities of a signal and ground.

What it does is at one end of a balanced cable, it inverts the signal and puts both the normal and inverted signals onto two wires of the cable. Any noise picked up along the cable will be the same, not inverted, on both signal wires. So if the recieving end takes the difference of the two signals, it ends up with just the wanted audio and the noise is cancelled out.

That's why and how balanced signals work; it sounds bad when using it with a stereo cable because anything that is the same between the left and right channels is cancelled out; there's bound to be some inbalance, whether it's a stereo or panned sample, or any type of reverb effect, or even just a slightly uneven left-right balance, so you get some sound leaking thru.



TL;DR, they're mono inputs, they can't take a stereo input, you need to use 2 inputs to record in stereo.

Ah okay. So what's the purpose then using 2x Mono to 1x Stereo?

Mephisto wrote:Ah okay. So what's the purpose then using 2x Mono to 1x Stereo?

there is no purpose going that direction - unless you find an interface with stereo 1/4" in (i've never seen one).

going the other way though, 1x stereo to 2x mono makes a lot of sense, like using a headphone out into something else.

alright thank you for enlighting me

That particular configuration of cable is also useful in many send/patch configurations in mixers and stuff.

For example, my mixer, on the 4 mic channels, has 4 channel inserts, basically you plug the "stereo" end of the cable into the channel insert, and instead of left and right audio, the two mono ends are an output and an input. So you can insert an effect or whatever into the path of something already going into the mixer, without having to reroute anything except inserting the one TRS to dual mono cable.