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-- levels issue...

Posted by Inertia on Mar-11-2004 02:32:

levels issue...

last time my friends got together and put together a poor man's DJ booth to have some fun, we had:

2x Stanton STR8-80
2x American Audio CDS-1
1x Stanton SK6 2chan Mixer

granted, its quite shabby, but hey, we're not rich. anyways, we hooked up all 4 units to the mixer, the decks were working fine, but the CD players were going in the red consistantly (as in, ALWAYS in the red). i was scared this could fuck up my friends SK6 and told them to leave the SK6 and hook up the even shabbier American Audio mixer the CD decks came with.

anyone know why this happened? we speculated it might have to do with voltage, as the CD decks were using 9V connections, but the mixer and decks were 12V. so we hooked up the other mixer and went with it, was basically the same shit, only the stanton had a crossfader for cue purposes where as the AA only had chan 1, chan 2 and chan 1+2 switches. not to mention it does not show levels with LEDs, or anything for that matter, so it could have been in the red all night and we didnt know, hehehe.

our poor man's Excession group has just upgraded to a Stanton RM3-S mixer for our gatherings, still havent tested it with the CD decks, so can i expect the same thing? we might also get a pair of Mk2's if with ortofon pro DJ s needles, if we are lucky, hehe.

Posted by dukes on Mar-11-2004 02:42:

does sound like its the voltages.....but cd decks aint really a speciality of mine

it sounds like a sensable explanation. is there any way of changing the voltages of the decks or cd's and testing?

Posted by DJTJ on Mar-11-2004 11:42:

Its got nothing to do with the voltage the CD deck uses at all. Its to do with the line level output of the CD decks.

CD players, MD players, computer sundcards etc tend to vary quite a lot with their interpretation of "line level". You will find that some devices are a lot louder than others even though they are meant to be at line level. What you need to do is simply turn down the gain on the mixer channels hooked up to the CD players.

Posted by razzi on Mar-11-2004 12:04:

probably wont be the voltages.. check the gain on the channels, and make sure that the cd players are plugged into the LINE, not the PHONO.

Posted by `pr0digy on Mar-11-2004 15:12:

Plugging line level into PHONO could be quite bad...

Posted by DJTJ on Mar-11-2004 16:11:

quote:
Originally posted by razzi
probably wont be the voltages.. check the gain on the channels, and make sure that the cd players are plugged into the LINE, not the PHONO.

No, it won't be in the phono inputs... If it was, it would be REALLY REALLY loud, and massively distorted. If you want to see what I mean, try it, and you will instinctively duck, I guarantee it!

Posted by Inertia on Mar-12-2004 04:16:

everything was hooked up accordingly, that im sure of. we even turned down the gain, ALL the way down, and it was still in the red. sound was not distorted though.