One of the student groups at my son's school puts on an open mic once a month or so. Typically this draws a lot of karaoke acts so they only have one mic on stage.
My son would like to hook up a small mixer to connect a boss rc-300 looper (mic and his guitar), and a second mic out of the loop chain to the house PA.
We will have no access to the house PA and will only have the one XLR mic cable run to the stage to work with.
Can we run our mixers output to the channel the house mic is connected to? We haven't bought the mixer yet but are looking at a 4 to 5 channel in the sub $100 range.
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Not enough inputs at open mic night.
Re: Not enough inputs at open mic night.
Using a local mixer makes a lt of sense in your situation. The only real challenge is to convert the line level output o the mixer to a mic level signal for the house PA.
Some mixers have a button near the output XLR(s) to do exactly that. Several Mackie desks do this, for example. The alternative is to employ a DI box for the purpose -- a unit which takes in a line level signal (usually unbalanced) and provides a mic level output signal which is electrically isolated (a good idea when working with unknown and untested mains powered equipment on stage! )
DI boxes come in both passive and active forms. Passive would be fine in your situation and comprise little more than a transformer. Active types require power either from an internal battery or phantom power (from the house PA system, if available).
H
Some mixers have a button near the output XLR(s) to do exactly that. Several Mackie desks do this, for example. The alternative is to employ a DI box for the purpose -- a unit which takes in a line level signal (usually unbalanced) and provides a mic level output signal which is electrically isolated (a good idea when working with unknown and untested mains powered equipment on stage! )
DI boxes come in both passive and active forms. Passive would be fine in your situation and comprise little more than a transformer. Active types require power either from an internal battery or phantom power (from the house PA system, if available).
H
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- Hugh Robjohns
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Re: Not enough inputs at open mic night.
Cheap DI, http://www.orchid-electronics.co.uk/micro.htmOrchid Micro is probably the best VFM but it is active and requires phantom power (the Classic can run from a battery but with a slight performance hit). A small mixer will always be a useful bit of kit though and it may be worth considering buying something slightly more versatile like an A&H Zed 10fx which has a mic level output pad (the venerable Mackie 1202 has similar) which doesn't rely on the FOH desk features. The Zed also has a decent stereo USB interface which might be useful at home.
Or, given that you're in the US one of the ART boxes (though Orchid do very cheap international shipping so a Classic DI may be a very useful purchase).
Or, given that you're in the US one of the ART boxes (though Orchid do very cheap international shipping so a Classic DI may be a very useful purchase).
Last edited by Sam Spoons on Tue Jan 03, 2017 10:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- Sam Spoons
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Re: Not enough inputs at open mic night.
If you're going for the DI box solution, then I'd really recommend getting something passive in this situation. Whilst almost all mixers can supply phantom, it could be that the one you're going to connect to can't.
Re: Not enough inputs at open mic night.
I second that. One of the ART passive DI boxes (PDB or Z-direct) would be fine...
Orchid's Active DI boxes are great, but you may not have access to phantom power down the mic cable, batteries are a pain, and an active DI box is simply not necessary for this application...
H
Orchid's Active DI boxes are great, but you may not have access to phantom power down the mic cable, batteries are a pain, and an active DI box is simply not necessary for this application...
H
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- Hugh Robjohns
Moderator -
Posts: 43693 Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2003 12:00 am
Location: Worcestershire, UK
Contact:
Technical Editor, Sound On Sound...
(But generally posting my own personal views and not necessarily those of SOS, the company or the magazine!)
In my world, things get less strange when I read the manual...
(But generally posting my own personal views and not necessarily those of SOS, the company or the magazine!)
In my world, things get less strange when I read the manual...