By 6/8 Stanley
Wed Sep 01, 2021 9:56 pm
Never heard of attenuator until last week. Got a multitrack recorder app for the moto phone.
Got a 3.5mm TRRS to 3- RCA cable. One rca goes from mixer left (mono) record out to TRRS jack on phone. Other 2 rca's go to mixer stereo playback in. Earbuds go to headphone jack on the mixer. So I can record a track on the phone app and then record more tracks while listening to the other tracks (unless I mute them in the app). Using condenser mic. External effect box from insert on mic channel.
So damn hard to set levels for the phone. Volume on the phone needs to be set high to get decent sound. Mic channel gain needs to be set about 4 to get good signal on mixer meter. Record out gain needs to be very low to keep from clipping in the app. There's only a tiny twist of the knob left to adjust audio signal going to phone. VU meter in the app is too small. VU meter phone apps all seem to be for measuring ambient external noise which is useless and I doubt if they work inside my recorder app.
Found a bunch of little boxes with 2 or 4 channels and a volume knob, about $50 to $1350. They do up to 50dB pad which is OK. Don't want expensive since this is just for sonic scratchpad not serious recording. Wonder about the passive preamp/attenuator spec though. They all seem made to use between preamp or interface and power amp, or power amp to speakers, not mixer to phone. So maybe the impedence is all wrong. The beatbuddy type attenuated cables won't work since they won't go to mixer playback channel. Plus I want stereo channels in case I need to pad stereo channels going into zoom handheld recorder.
I spent most of last two nights looking up impedance mismatch but it's all useless or over my head. I read something about attenuator impedance mismatch being bad but that's about all I got out of it.
Got a 3.5mm TRRS to 3- RCA cable. One rca goes from mixer left (mono) record out to TRRS jack on phone. Other 2 rca's go to mixer stereo playback in. Earbuds go to headphone jack on the mixer. So I can record a track on the phone app and then record more tracks while listening to the other tracks (unless I mute them in the app). Using condenser mic. External effect box from insert on mic channel.
So damn hard to set levels for the phone. Volume on the phone needs to be set high to get decent sound. Mic channel gain needs to be set about 4 to get good signal on mixer meter. Record out gain needs to be very low to keep from clipping in the app. There's only a tiny twist of the knob left to adjust audio signal going to phone. VU meter in the app is too small. VU meter phone apps all seem to be for measuring ambient external noise which is useless and I doubt if they work inside my recorder app.
Found a bunch of little boxes with 2 or 4 channels and a volume knob, about $50 to $1350. They do up to 50dB pad which is OK. Don't want expensive since this is just for sonic scratchpad not serious recording. Wonder about the passive preamp/attenuator spec though. They all seem made to use between preamp or interface and power amp, or power amp to speakers, not mixer to phone. So maybe the impedence is all wrong. The beatbuddy type attenuated cables won't work since they won't go to mixer playback channel. Plus I want stereo channels in case I need to pad stereo channels going into zoom handheld recorder.
I spent most of last two nights looking up impedance mismatch but it's all useless or over my head. I read something about attenuator impedance mismatch being bad but that's about all I got out of it.