Sound wizards
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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Kage_Prototype on Tue Jun 1st at 12:18pm 2004


Yeah, that's why I put a smiley in there. [addsig]



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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Dred_furst on Fri Jun 4th at 2:36pm 2004


there are a few things you need. these are:

  • An audio Input (tape machine, Cd, DVD, computer)
  • A mixing desk (you have one)
  • An amplifier (the thing between your speakers and mixing desk that isnt wire)
  • And the speakers.

Thats it, the mixing desk will allow you to switch and mix between sound sources.

by the look of the powered mixer, your amp is inside the mixing deskm, so just plug your pc into the input and away you go!

[addsig]




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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Wild Card on Fri Jun 4th at 2:38pm 2004


Well the mixing and the song playing is done on computer with AtomixMP3.

But I see now I will need a amplifier.

[addsig]




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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Dred_furst on Fri Jun 4th at 2:39pm 2004


ive edited my post, i didnt pay attention properly. [addsig]



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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Wild Card on Fri Jun 4th at 2:44pm 2004


Yes, but I intend in not using a powered mixer [addsig]



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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Dred_furst on Fri Jun 4th at 3:04pm 2004


ok,if you are gonna try and use a computer to do mixing, you will definatley need an amp and a better set of speakers then desktop ones. different speakers because if you feed 100 watts of power from an amp into 40 watt speakers, something is going to break. most likely the speakers. The better idea is to use a proffesional kit instead of software. hardware is generally better than software.

I talked to my dad who is in the sound business, that if you try to put a pc sound output into a mixing desk input, it doesnt always work and it can sometimes mess it up. he said something about checking the impedance levels and if theyre the wrong levels the input will sound quiet or distorted or can lose the bass. he said that you need to do a bit of research

anyway, i hope that i have helped in some way,

[addsig]




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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by fraggard on Fri Jun 4th at 3:22pm 2004


I believe it's very critical to match the impedances on the sound card and the amplifier... a typical soundcards output impedance is around 8-20 Ohms, and the line input impedance of an average stereo is around 40000 Ohms. Worst case, you might overdrive either side and end up with something burning.

Besides that I have noticed that if you use unshielded cables on a direct connection from PC to a speaker, you get a wierd hum (which I have later found to be a 60Hz hum caused by a ground loop).

A simple solution would be an impedance matching transformer. See if you can find one at an audio equipment store. You can find some specs from http://www.bcae1.com/trnimpmt.htm (funky little calculator thingy at the bottom of the page). I had one custom made for a friend because I couldn't find any over here, but you might be able to find one designed specifically for PCs. I dont know what to do about the ground loop,it just took care of itself when I used a shielded cable.

Hope that helped somehow (most of the information is just from random experience though, might not be correct).





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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by 7dk2h4md720ih on Fri Jun 4th at 3:22pm 2004


Just to clarify, he actually has two 450 watt speakers Dred.




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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Wild Card on Fri Jun 4th at 3:26pm 2004


What if we used the same setup we have right now, 2 speakers (450W each) connected to the powered mixer. But instead of having 2 CD players pluged to the mixer, have just the single computer. Would that work?

Because half the time, we get stuck with a broken mixer (it playes the sound, but we cant fade the music for some reason) so I though just having the computer pluged into it so all the mixer has to to is amplify the sound and send it to the speakers, and the mixing part would be taken care of on the computer.

[addsig]




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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by fraggard on Fri Jun 4th at 3:57pm 2004


? posted by Wild Card

What if we used the same setup we have right now, 2 speakers (450W each) connected to the powered mixer. But instead of having 2 CD players pluged to the mixer, have just the single computer. Would that work?

That should work perfectly, but if you connect them without an impedance matching transformer, you will get a lot of distortion, plus your soundcard is not isolated... So it is definitely somewhat dangerous to do that, but it shouldnt normally give you any trouble except a little distortion. Try this page for some interesting info on getting rid of distortions and the like.





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Re: Sound wizards
Posted by Dred_furst on Fri Jun 4th at 4:18pm 2004


to put it simply, Yes. that is what you are likely need to do. you need to compare the impedance of the two items, your PC and your mixer. [addsig]




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