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Post by brewer on May 25, 2019 17:03:47 GMT -6
I was told it was a no no, but I'm getting a louder and cleaner signal. Thoughts?
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Post by Tbone81 on May 25, 2019 17:21:34 GMT -6
I’ve done it....on accident...didn’t sound good ((distortion). BUT, don’t listen to me, If it sounds good then it is good. A lot of mic Pres use a pad to bring them down to line level so if the gain structure is working no big deal.
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Post by matt@IAA on May 25, 2019 17:44:05 GMT -6
There’s a risk that you turn on phantom and hurt something if the outputs aren’t protected from high voltage. The mic input is also usually a small load, like 2k, so it may be loading down whatever you’re sending from in a different way than say, a 10k input would. Most mic inputs have some minimum gain, and that plus a nominal line level may run out of headroom somewhere on the circuit. Or you could run out of headroom right away at the input, if there is a transformer. If those things don’t happen, then whatever. It’s just voltage.
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Post by shoe on May 25, 2019 17:44:53 GMT -6
I've done it to get the Revolution tone.
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Post by mulmany on May 25, 2019 19:06:40 GMT -6
I have been told that this was a part of Nirvana's guitar sound. Probably not what you are going for!
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Post by brewer on May 25, 2019 20:39:07 GMT -6
No, I wasn't going for that.. I accidentally plugged into the mic input and was pleasantly surprised by how much more clean gain I was getting.
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Post by mulmany on May 25, 2019 20:49:13 GMT -6
No, I wasn't going for that.. I accidentally plugged into the mic input and was pleasantly surprised by how much more clean gain I was getting. Is it truly line level? What is the source? It's just gain. It all depends on the preamps headroom and how much extra gain you need to add. |
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Post by brewer on May 25, 2019 20:56:17 GMT -6
It says 'Line' so I'm assuming it is. It's a davinci.
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 14,940 
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Post by ericn on May 25, 2019 21:25:17 GMT -6
The correct answer is if it sounds good it sounds good!
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Post by shoe on May 25, 2019 23:02:05 GMT -6
It says 'Line' so I'm assuming it is. It's a davinci. Is this the Light Harmonic Da Vinci? |
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Post by brewer on May 26, 2019 7:24:15 GMT -6
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Post by shoe on May 26, 2019 9:07:19 GMT -6
So the output of the Da Vinci is feeding another preamp's mic input?
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Post by brewer on May 26, 2019 10:06:55 GMT -6
So the output of the Da Vinci is feeding another preamp's mic input? Yes. DaVinci>Klark Tek eq>ampex 601>dac. I do have to be careful with the davinci gain or I do get a little low frequency hum if I crank it too much. |
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Post by johneppstein on May 26, 2019 11:31:28 GMT -6
So the output of the Da Vinci is feeding another preamp's mic input? Yes. DaVinci>Klark Tek eq>ampex 601>dac. I do have to be careful with the davinci gain or I do get a little low frequency hum if I crank it too much. Don't you mean "Ampex 601>ADC"?
To answer your initial question, "line level" can mean different things in different contexts. In the hi-fi world "ine level" is a different thing than in pro audio. Signal levels are lower and impedance is different (generally higher).
(I tried inserting the graph but couldn't make it work.)
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Post by drbill on May 26, 2019 14:41:00 GMT -6
I was told it was a no no, Creative individuals have been breaking rules since time began.....  |
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Post by chessparov on May 26, 2019 16:38:04 GMT -6
Then it becomes a current event! Chris
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Post by markfouxman on May 26, 2019 18:17:47 GMT -6
I was told it was a no no, but I'm getting a louder and cleaner signal. Thoughts? Actually, it is not a 'no no'... To avoid overloading, usually it is done with very simple 2 resistors voltage divider. Those resistors can be soldered to the pins right inside the XLR connector. Best, M |
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Post by the other mark williams on May 26, 2019 19:31:12 GMT -6
So the output of the Da Vinci is feeding another preamp's mic input? Yes. DaVinci>Klark Tek eq>ampex 601>dac. I do have to be careful with the davinci gain or I do get a little low frequency hum if I crank it too much. Which Klark-Teknik EQ is it? I didn't realize they had an EQ with a mic level input. Is it a channel strip? |
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Post by drbill on May 26, 2019 22:39:38 GMT -6
Yes. DaVinci>Klark Tek eq>ampex 601>dac. I do have to be careful with the davinci gain or I do get a little low frequency hum if I crank it too much. Which Klark-Teknik EQ is it? I didn't realize they had an EQ with a mic level input. Is it a channel strip? 601 is often used as a mic pre : So yeah evidently the EQ is in the middle, continuing the line level output of the first pre - between the DaVinci mic pre and the Ampex Mic Pre..... Mic Pre + EQ feeding Mic Pre in this case..... |
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Post by shoe on May 27, 2019 3:22:31 GMT -6
So, it appears, based on the Ampex schematic, that the line input bypasses the first two gain stages, while the mic input goes through them and an input transformer. I'm not able to tell what impact the input transformer has on the gain of the first stage, here, but it doesn't look like the input pentode is set up to be that high gain. It's the only thing your line signal would see before it reaches the record level control, which you have control over, so basically I think what's probably happening here is if you aren't clipping that first stage, you're able to not clip in the rest of the circuit given you can attenuate the output of that stage with the record level control down to nothing since it's a straight volume control. Seems to me like, probably, a peculiarity of this particular Ampex preamp design allows this flexibility. For example, if you tried that with a REDD.47, you would have to engage the pad and bring the gain way down and still be not totally clean most likely (not using the pad with that pre results in the ridiculously distorted Revolution sound I mentioned earlier).  |
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Post by adamjbrass on May 28, 2019 8:02:40 GMT -6
If the signal is super low, it can work ok. But a hot line-level signal will usually distort a mic input.
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