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By damien907 Wed May 25, 2011 1:05 pm
all it has is a "digital out" that to my knowledge is something like spidif.

i think its called coax though.

have you guys ever sampled directly through a coax cable into say the digital in on your mpc 2500, or the digital in on your audio card for that matter?

i found this digital to analog converter box on amazon

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and if i got this i could just use one of these Y- rca to 1/4 inch cables and rec in from my mpc that way, but i have a huge gripe with this; i really hate how when you record in that way, it meshes your stereo sound together into one channel, and gives you this psudeo-stereo sample. is this really the only way you can record from your tv?

i know when i connect my turntable i can connect it to the left and right jacks of my mpc and sample that way.
im just trying to think of a way i could do that with my tv.

have any of you guys ever tried using one of these instead?

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i would like to try to go into the digital in of my mpc with one of these but my guess is it wont work, i have tried to plug my xbox direct into those and got nothing, probably because it wasnt a spidif signal coming from my xbox. i fear the same thing from that rca to rca cable.

i would really like to record both left and right channels from my tv at the same time though, anyone get this to work?

thanks
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By damien907 Wed May 25, 2011 2:31 pm
cool, yeah i thought it would work, i really dont like this recording into one input and getting the fake stereo; but i guess ill live with it.

is a coaxial cable the same thing as spidif?

it seems that spidif transmits either as rca or a coaxial connection, so im thinking its the same thing, they just dont say its spidif on my tv.
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By *Pilchard* Wed May 25, 2011 3:34 pm
damien907 wrote: found this digital to analog converter box on amazon

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Surely with analogue ins and digital outs that box does the opposite of what you want? Or am i misunderstanding?

I would try the Digital out on your tv directly to the Digi in of your mpc before I went spending out on anything.
To test it you could just use a regular RCA to RCA.
If it works then get yourself a proper Digital interconnect.
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By damien907 Wed May 25, 2011 4:46 pm
oh shit, i didnt even see that, the box i was looking at on amazon was a digital in to an analog out.

may have been a little different from the picture i posted up.

imma try it though
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By Jungleman Wed May 25, 2011 6:57 pm
*Pilchard* wrote:I would try the Digital out on your tv directly to the Digi in of your mpc before I went spending out on anything.
To test it you could just use a regular RCA to RCA.
If it works then get yourself a proper Digital interconnect.


Yes. It should work, if the tv digital out is 16-bit/44.1kHz. Maybe the tv has some switchable output options?

And Coax is stereo.
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By nogginj Wed May 25, 2011 7:15 pm
yea how about this...what is making the sound that you are trying to get out of your tv? just plug directly into that, screw your tv. or are you picking up signals wirelessly over the airwaves.

the tv digi out (coax....1 rca cord) is stereo if it goes to another digital in. it's called spdif. it will only work spdif to spdif. it will also only work with a really short regular rca cable, or a nicely shielded proper SPDIF cable. you can sometimes get away with a regualr RCA, but it usually needs to be short if it's not a specific spdif cable.

As for merging your stereo signals i have no idea what you are talking about...everything you've talked about is a stereo signal.

but honestly, why are you trying to sample off the tv? can you not just access the dvd player or cable box directly? i mean unless you are picking up airwaves, something has to be plugged into the tv to make noise...why not just take the tv out of the picture?

if you must sample off the tv, then either go tv spdif -> mpc spdif or get a digital (spdif) to analog converter (the opposite of the picture you posted), and then just plug the analog outs into your mpc like normal.
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By damien907 Thu May 26, 2011 6:53 am
im not using tv speakers at all, im just trying to sample stuff from my xbox/ps2 ect.

the psudeo-stereo thing im talking about is, in the past when i have sampled from my Y-cable to 1/4 stereo inputs and looked at the waveform on soundforge, i always showed me 1 waveform (similar to a mono signal) except it still is stereo, you just cant take one channel out, or copy one channel to either side like you can with true stereo, (as in if i rip a cd onto my computer and import it into soundforge) then i see both the L-R channels, and i can select one half and copy it.

the real life applications of this would be say i had a track with drums and vocals panned hard left and right. drums (L) on one side and vocals on the other (R)

if i ripped this file directly to my computer from a cd, i would be able to isolate the drums and chop a break from them like that. and copy them to a new stereo file by highlighting the left channel and pasting it to a new file.
however, if i record from my Y-cable or cd player into my mpc, i dont go into both left and right channels even though i am inputting a stereo signal.
im still just importing the stereo signal to one channel on my mpc (R), so if i imported this file to soundforge after recording it on the mpc, i wouldnt be able to select just the drums and copy them over so i would have just drums and no vocals. although i would still be able to hear the vocals panned hard left and right because my input signal to the mpc was coming from a stereo cable.
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By Jungleman Thu May 26, 2011 9:00 am
damien907 wrote:although i would still be able to hear the vocals panned hard left and right because my input signal to the mpc was coming from a stereo cable.


What? I don't follow you.

If you feed a combined stereo signal to one input of your MPC - as you said - the result is mono.
No matter what kind of cable you use, if you only record one input to the MPC, the result is mono. You can't hear any panned elements in the signal once it is combined.
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By damien907 Thu May 26, 2011 7:54 pm
^^^ ok yeah i was wondering that; i thought i might have made a mistake telling you guys this, but id didnt check first; i was just going off of my memory. i havent recorded with one of those Y cables in like a year, i have just been sampling into both the L and R inputs on my turntable lately.

so is there a way to record actual stereo samples from my tv/xbox/cd player / whatever to my mpc like my turnatable does?

like one of those rca to 1/4 inch cables with 2 1/4 inch cables on one side?

they make a rca to 1/4 inch adaptor plug like this
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i was thinking if i get 2 of these then i could use this from my tv to my mpc
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and not have the problem of getting my signal converted to mono.

ill have to wait and try this out on an older tv or get that box first though.

in the meantime im going to try this coaxial cable into my digi inputs on my mpc.

and i just thought of plugging 2 of those rca to 1/4 inch jacks into the red and whites on my xbox and going directly from that to my mpc. then i could skip the whole tv step.
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By nogginj Thu May 26, 2011 9:32 pm
and i just thought of plugging 2 of those rca to 1/4 inch jacks into the red and whites on my xbox and going directly from that to my mpc. then i could skip the whole tv step.

bingo x2
(that was suggested a few posts ago)

do that. forget the tv.