September 29, 2025 • 16 mins
Levels mysteriously rising and falling with no changes in your setup? In this episode of The Pro Audio Suite, we go hunting for those dreaded signal-chain gremlins.
From flaky TRS connections that drop a balanced leg and cause sudden 6 dB losses, to patchbay switches that “moved themselves,” to the quirks of send/return jacks on interfaces like the Audient iD series—we unpack the common culprits behind random level swings.
We also share a practical, step-by-step troubleshooting method called binary reduction: change one thing at a time, ideally from the middle of the chain, and halve your suspect list with every move.
What you’ll learn:
-
Why XLR usually outperforms TRS for reliable, balanced connections
-
How to “exercise” or clean jacks to stop intermittent dropouts
-
How the Return jack on the Audient iD bypasses the preamp (and why the Send is half-normalled)
-
Why patchbays and inserts can be both lifesavers and headaches
-
The simple logic of binary reduction for solving audio mysteries fast
Mentioned: Grace m101, Audient iD22/iD44, Mackie inserts, Apogee Duet, phantom power quirks, Behringer patchbay switches.
Sponsors:
-
TriBooth — use code TRIPAP200 for USD $200 off your TriBooth
-
Austrian Audio — Making passion heard.
Credits: Recorded via Source-Connect. Edited by Andrew Peters. Mixed by Robbo. Tech support by George “The Tech” Whittam. theproaudiosuite.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
Get started.
Welcome.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello, everyone.
To the Pro Audio Suite.
These guys are professional.
They're motivated.
With Tech the VO stars.
George Whitten, founder of Source Elements.
Robert Marshall, international audio engineer.
Darren Robbo Robertson, and Global Voice.
Andrew Peters, thanks to Tribooth.
Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
(00:20):
Source Elements, George the Tech Whitten, and Robbo
and AP's international demos.
To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
.com.
Line up, man.
Here we go.
And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
Thanks to Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
And Tribooth, time to get the code.
T-R-I-P-A-P 200.
(00:42):
That will get you 200 US dollars off
your Tribooth.
Now, I've been fiddling around and finding some
weird shit going down in my studio when
recording through the Grace M101.
Some days I come in and I'm lucky
to peak at minus 20.
And then, like this morning when I was
recording, it came in at minus 10.
(01:02):
So I've done nothing different.
I've changed no levels.
I always stand pretty well in the same
place.
And I wouldn't have thought the microphone would
be sensitive to that kind of like 12
dB just by being a couple of inches
in a different spot from the microphone.
But I could be wrong.
Anyone got any ideas?
(01:22):
I would guess an analog pot.
A failing analog pot.
Maybe.
This is like click and clack.
Yeah.
So when you lose one leg of a
balanced fader or a balanced signal...
That's 6 dB.
That's 6 dB.
Yeah, you lose 6.
Yeah, not 10.
But maybe he's not calculating exactly right.
(01:44):
Yeah.
But would that vary and go up and
down?
So one day it's louder and the next
day it's quieter?
Yeah, depending on humidity or...
Well, intermittent cable.
Like you're getting the balanced signal and then
you're not getting the balanced signal.
So one day it's coming through with all
the two legs of the balanced signal and
it's loud.
And then another day the cable gets moved
just enough, if it's a bad cable, that
(02:06):
you're only getting one leg of the balanced
signal and it's not loud.
This is a good time to talk about
tip ring sleeve connector problems.
The reason why I like really true pro
gear for road and production, rarely uses quarter
inch plugs on.
They're almost always XLR.
Because the XLR jack design is dramatically better
(02:29):
at making a reliable contact.
The area of the pin that makes contact
with the socket is dramatically better than a
tip ring sleeve or any kind of a
jack.
The jacks only have one tiny point of
contact.
There's like a little metal finger, right?
And it just touches the edge of the
sleeve, you know?
(02:51):
And if that exact point builds up any
corrosion, you've all of a sudden lost that
signal.
So that's a part of your balanced signal.
And that would cause the signal to drop.
But it could come back if like, I
don't know, you bump the desk or something
moved.
Or you spin the jack or something.
So yeah, so I was about to say,
(03:11):
easy cheap fix is you exercise your connectors.
I like to joke that I'm exorcising them.
But you're exercising the demons out of your
jacks by twisting them around, exercising them.
So just literally, some people pull in, out,
in, out, in, out.
If that's your thing, go for it.
(03:33):
But I find that twisting them side to
side is just as effective, if not more
so.
Just twisting them, rotating them back and forth.
And you're burnishing the contact on the jack
and on the slug.
Yes.
Jack-a-sutra.
Yeah.
So you'll notice that that clean burnishes the
(03:55):
contacts.
And you'll probably hear, if you're monitoring the
input in your cans when you're doing this,
you'll probably hear static when you're doing it
at that time.
And if the static, if you keep twisting
it back and forth until the static goes
away completely, then you've done your job.
You've burnished the contact.
Yeah, contact cleaning spray is nice too.
(04:16):
But you don't always have that handy.
And so just a twist is a way
to go.
I learned a hard lesson when I had
my recording truck with quarter-inch patch bays.
And all the patch bays were quarter-inch
front and rear.
So there was a lot of quarter-inch
jacks going on, you know?
I mean, like tons.
(04:37):
And I just learned that that was a
really bad choice for a remote recording truck
because the thing's moving around, it's in different
temperatures and humidities, and those things were unreliable.
And also quarter-inches don't grab very well.
No, they didn't have an extremely…
Like you pull on that patch bay a
little bit and the back of it pulls
like slightly halfway out and now you've lost
(04:58):
a contact or some stupid thing like that.
Every time I got to a gig, I
learned to reach around the back of the
rack.
Shove everything in.
And I would reach around and I would
push every jack back into the back of
the panels just to be 100% sure
I didn't have a bad contact.
But that's where I learned.
I was like, oh, that's why they have
punch-down blocks and these less convenient connectors.
(05:23):
The worst quarter-inch design, and I'll name
them, Behringer's got a patch bay, quarter-inch
patch bay, and the half-normaling, normal, fully
normal switch is on the top.
And there are these little slider switches that
move really easily.
And so it's in a rack and you're
trying to pull this thing out and you're
trying to pull it out in such a
way that you don't pull every jack out
the back of it.
So inevitably what you do is you put
(05:45):
your hands behind it and you try to
push it out from the jacks behind, but
you put your hands down there and then
you move every single normaling switch.
And you're like, oh my goodness, that's bad.
I don't even, like, you have to go
back to your design and figure out which
one went where, worst designer.
Well, I mean, I was asking Audient, before
we hit record, I was asking Andrew if
the plus 10 mode was engaged.
(06:06):
So apparently, I'm looking at the console, a
screenshot of the Audient ID console, and I'm
not seeing that plus 10 feature.
But maybe it's the smaller ID 4 or
one of the other products.
But I know for a fact, some of
the Audients have a plus 10 boost.
So that can get in your way too.
(06:27):
So another thing we talked about is the
fact that, and this is a little bit
getting in the weeds, because it really only
involves this interface.
What's unique about the Audient ID 44 and
the 22 and some others they make is
they have what's called a send and a
return jack.
And those are handy because now you can
(06:48):
insert audio through what's called the return jack
and bypass the internal preamp.
So that means you have one less point
of failure or another knob to fiddle with.
You just go from your external preamp into
return, which is also a balanced connection, by
the way, and you're bypassing a whole section
(07:10):
of the circuit.
The gain.
So you don't have to worry about, yeah,
another gain knob to worry about.
Yeah.
So that's something we're going to send you
home, Andrew, and have you report back on
the next show and tell us what fixed
it.
A, twisting the jacks, or B, connecting to
the return jack.
So George, curious, are those sends half normaled?
(07:33):
My understanding is they're half normal.
Can you plug into the send?
So if you plug into send, it's going
to interrupt the signal path.
No, it won't interrupt.
It will send it without interrupting it.
Correct.
It's half normal.
Yes, it's half normal.
What he's explaining.
So it's like a Y.
Yeah, the send jack on the back is
sort of like a splitter.
(07:53):
So if you have a mic plugged into
an input, you can plug something into the
send jack that you want to send audio
to.
Now, I used to use these occasionally as
a phone patch.
Like a direct out.
Yeah, just to send the mic preamp out
to a phone hybrid or an ISDN box
or something else you have to send the
(08:13):
audio to.
Kind of handy.
I'll give you the funny trick.
So the same send return when it's TRS,
so all on one jack, and so the
separate send returns?
Yeah, that's a different thing we're describing.
Right.
With the old Mackies, I think they reversed
the send and the return so that you
could purposely plug the quarter inch jack halfway
in, not break the signal, and get a
(08:37):
direct out.
Yeah, that's right.
I remember setting that up for people.
Another cool hack with those insert jacks on
the Mackie boards is my dad helped me
build these little mic mute speaker mute boxes.
And so they had one quarter inch cable
that went into the insert, and then they
had a pair of quarter inch ins and
(08:57):
outs for the monitor's amp.
So between the input and the output to
the speakers.
And so when you flick the switch in
one position, the monitors were muted, but the
signal would pass through the send return jack.
You flick the switch, and it would cut
the signal to the microphone, cutting off your
mic, and turn on the speakers.
(09:17):
Does that remind you of anything?
Radio broadcast people?
A few things, maybe.
Yes, it does.
Yeah, he did that with an insert jack?
Yeah, yeah.
I still have a couple of these boxes
laying around.
I will actually have to listen to our
episode again and listen to that again to
follow that, because I was not totally following
that.
(09:39):
So just to really quickly summarize, there's a
quarter inch, the back of the box my
dad would make, has five quarter inch jacks.
One of them is strictly for the insert
jack, and the other two are ins and
outs for the left and right monitor speakers.
So it goes between the monitor output of
(09:59):
the mixer, or the control room out, as
they call them on the Mackie, to your
speakers or your amps.
And then your insert cable, which is a
standard tip ring sleeve quarter inch balanced cable,
goes to the other jack.
It's an unbalanced insert cable, right?
It's technically unbalanced.
The cable is a balanced cable, but it's
doing two jobs, sending audio to and from
(10:21):
the jack.
It's a weird thing.
And so all you're doing is breaking the
connection between one set of jacks and the
other, depending on which position the switch is
in.
And that way you never have to worry
about your microphone feeding back with your monitor
speakers.
So whenever your mic is on, the monitors
are off, and vice versa.
So it was just a handy tool, and
(10:43):
it's what they use in radio station consoles
all the time, where the jack, you know,
hits their on button, and the big giant
speakers shut off the second they start talking.
You know, that's common.
So the switch was picking between the tip
and the sleeve?
Is that what it was switching between?
Yeah, I don't remember what electronically was going
on, but it was just breaking the connection.
So if you broke the connection between the
(11:05):
return, the signal wouldn't return back into the
board, and so it wouldn't pass a signal.
It was just dead.
Yeah, wouldn't go to the speakers.
Yep.
So that was a fun little project.
Talk about a tangent.
And talk about a niche topic as well,
because the fact that I've got these external
preamps running through an ID44 is kind of
(11:25):
weird and kind of niche.
And you're just lucky.
Well, Andrew, the other thing you can try
is see if you get the same problem
with a different preamp.
So the whole thing with troubleshooting is always
to pick a point and change something and
see if the problem happens to the left
or right of where you changed something.
So if you change the preamp, and you
(11:48):
still get that gain problem changing, or, you
know, one day it's minus 10, the other
day it's plus 20, or whatever the difference
is, then you know the problem is not
your preamp and it's everything after the preamp.
So you've ruled out your microphone, and you've
ruled out the preamp.
Or if you use a different preamp, and
you still have the same problem, then you
(12:09):
know the problem is probably your microphone, because
it happened with a different preamp, and therefore
it's nothing from the preamp after.
So that's called binary reduction, and it's really
a great way to troubleshoot.
I didn't know it was called binary reduction,
good to know.
I just called it process elimination.
But yeah, you only want to change one
variable at a time.
That's the really crucial thing.
(12:29):
If you don't change one component at a
time...
But change something in the middle.
If you change something in the middle, you've
now isolated to half the thing.
If you start at the beginning, you have
to do all the variables.
But if you start in the middle, then
you only have to do half of them
on the next test.
And if you split that in half, you
(12:49):
only have to do half of those in
the next test.
So if you keep on splitting it in
the middle, you'll speed up your troubleshooting.
Beautiful.
Well, that's my wig sorted then.
That's a good one.
That's stuff you learn the hard way if
you're working in big studios with thousands of
connectors.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
When there's like 8 million points in between,
you're like, which one of these 80 is
it?
(13:09):
I'm going to pick point number 40.
Now I'll know if it's point 1 to
40 or 40 to 80.
Instead of starting at 1 and going through
everything linearly.
Interesting.
Good point.
I hope that helps.
Well, that's interesting because the reason with the
ID44 that I went for TRS was because
if I'd gone XLR, then I'd be going
(13:29):
using what I thought.
Go back to what I was getting at.
I thought if I use an XLR into
the ID44, I'd be using the internal preamp,
hence went for the DI with the TRS.
The preamp still works, which is kind of
annoying.
I was hoping I was bypassing it.
But if I go into the return on
(13:50):
channels 1 and 2.
It's so interesting.
Each company has a different...
If it's the line in, it's still hitting
that preamp.
Yeah.
Each company has a different opinion on how
to do that.
Like the Apogee Duet, weirdly, didn't do it
that way.
And it made me scratch my head more
than one time when I plugged in a
quarter inch thinking that was the line in.
(14:11):
And that was not the line in.
It was the guitar or instrument in.
Oh, it was the low Z in.
Yeah, you had to use the XLR as
the line in.
And then there was a setting in the
software inside their console that would switch it.
No, it was like literally not just a
pad, I don't think.
Well, maybe it was.
But it would switch modes and then it
(14:33):
was a line input.
But it was not logical to me at
all.
And to make matters worse, I rigged up
a piece of gear for somebody a couple
of weeks ago that's an audio video capture
device.
And it had two mic inputs, XLR and
quarter inch.
They were reversed.
The XLR was line in, the quarter inch
(14:53):
was the mic in.
And I was like, who in the hell
designed this thing?
Is phantom power out a quarter inch?
Is sending phantom power out a quarter inch?
That's definitely not.
No, it didn't have phantom power.
It didn't even have phantom power.
That speaks to the level of gear.
Yeah, well, that's the problem with video gear
that adds audio.
And it's made for corporate users.
(15:15):
So it was like a $1,500 piece
of gear.
It was expensive.
And yet it had those two reversed and
no phantom power.
So we still had to use a Rodecaster
mixer to give it a proper mic input.
It was a crazy discovery that I did
not think to read the manual because, you
know, you sort of assume, you know.
(15:38):
I mean, these days phantom power is like
kind of assumed for.
You can buy a $30 USB interface with
phantom power, but this $1,500 device with
two mic inputs had no phantom power.
It was just, it just bizarre to me.
And yeah, so never assume and with in
doubt.
That just makes you want to go back
to the design meeting for that one.
(16:00):
Yeah, RTFM, read the freaking manual.
What's that?
What's a manual?
Is that like a car you drive a
manual?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's got a dog leg.
The dog leg is called no phantom power.
Yeah, exactly.
That dog leg is cocked in the end.
(16:20):
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
The Pro Audio Suite.
With thanks to Tribooth and Austrian Audio.
Recorded using Source Connect.
Edited by Andrew Peters.
And mixed by Robbo.
Got your own audio issues?
Just ask Robbo.com.
With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
Don't forget to subscribe to the show and
join in the conversation on our Facebook group.
(16:42):
To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or
just say g'day, drop us a note at
our website, theproaudiosuite.com.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Y'all ready to be history?
Get started.
Welcome.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
Hello, everyone.
To the Pro Audio Suite.
These guys are professional.
They're motivated.
With Tech the VO stars.
George Whitten, founder of Source Elements.
Robert Marshall, international audio engineer.
Darren Robbo Robertson, and Global Voice.
Andrew Peters, thanks to Tribooth.
Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
(00:20):
Source Elements, George the Tech Whitten, and Robbo
and AP's international demos.
To find out more about us, check theproaudiosuite
.com.
Line up, man.
Here we go.
And welcome to another Pro Audio Suite.
Thanks to Austrian Audio, making passion heard.
And Tribooth, time to get the code.
T-R-I-P-A-P 200.
(00:42):
That will get you 200 US dollars off
your Tribooth.
Now, I've been fiddling around and finding some
weird shit going down in my studio when
recording through the Grace M101.
Some days I come in and I'm lucky
to peak at minus 20.
And then, like this morning when I was
recording, it came in at minus 10.
(01:02):
So I've done nothing different.
I've changed no levels.
I always stand pretty well in the same
place.
And I wouldn't have thought the microphone would
be sensitive to that kind of like 12
dB just by being a couple of inches
in a different spot from the microphone.
But I could be wrong.
Anyone got any ideas?
(01:22):
I would guess an analog pot.
A failing analog pot.
Maybe.
This is like click and clack.
Yeah.
So when you lose one leg of a
balanced fader or a balanced signal...
That's 6 dB.
That's 6 dB.
Yeah, you lose 6.
Yeah, not 10.
But maybe he's not calculating exactly right.
(01:44):
Yeah.
But would that vary and go up and
down?
So one day it's louder and the next
day it's quieter?
Yeah, depending on humidity or...
Well, intermittent cable.
Like you're getting the balanced signal and then
you're not getting the balanced signal.
So one day it's coming through with all
the two legs of the balanced signal and
it's loud.
And then another day the cable gets moved
just enough, if it's a bad cable, that
(02:06):
you're only getting one leg of the balanced
signal and it's not loud.
This is a good time to talk about
tip ring sleeve connector problems.
The reason why I like really true pro
gear for road and production, rarely uses quarter
inch plugs on.
They're almost always XLR.
Because the XLR jack design is dramatically better
(02:29):
at making a reliable contact.
The area of the pin that makes contact
with the socket is dramatically better than a
tip ring sleeve or any kind of a
jack.
The jacks only have one tiny point of
contact.
There's like a little metal finger, right?
And it just touches the edge of the
sleeve, you know?
(02:51):
And if that exact point builds up any
corrosion, you've all of a sudden lost that
signal.
So that's a part of your balanced signal.
And that would cause the signal to drop.
But it could come back if like, I
don't know, you bump the desk or something
moved.
Or you spin the jack or something.
So yeah, so I was about to say,
(03:11):
easy cheap fix is you exercise your connectors.
I like to joke that I'm exorcising them.
But you're exercising the demons out of your
jacks by twisting them around, exercising them.
So just literally, some people pull in, out,
in, out, in, out.
If that's your thing, go for it.
(03:33):
But I find that twisting them side to
side is just as effective, if not more
so.
Just twisting them, rotating them back and forth.
And you're burnishing the contact on the jack
and on the slug.
Yes.
Jack-a-sutra.
Yeah.
So you'll notice that that clean burnishes the
(03:55):
contacts.
And you'll probably hear, if you're monitoring the
input in your cans when you're doing this,
you'll probably hear static when you're doing it
at that time.
And if the static, if you keep twisting
it back and forth until the static goes
away completely, then you've done your job.
You've burnished the contact.
Yeah, contact cleaning spray is nice too.
(04:16):
But you don't always have that handy.
And so just a twist is a way
to go.
I learned a hard lesson when I had
my recording truck with quarter-inch patch bays.
And all the patch bays were quarter-inch
front and rear.
So there was a lot of quarter-inch
jacks going on, you know?
I mean, like tons.
(04:37):
And I just learned that that was a
really bad choice for a remote recording truck
because the thing's moving around, it's in different
temperatures and humidities, and those things were unreliable.
And also quarter-inches don't grab very well.
No, they didn't have an extremely…
Like you pull on that patch bay a
little bit and the back of it pulls
like slightly halfway out and now you've lost
(04:58):
a contact or some stupid thing like that.
Every time I got to a gig, I
learned to reach around the back of the
rack.
Shove everything in.
And I would reach around and I would
push every jack back into the back of
the panels just to be 100% sure
I didn't have a bad contact.
But that's where I learned.
I was like, oh, that's why they have
punch-down blocks and these less convenient connectors.
(05:23):
The worst quarter-inch design, and I'll name
them, Behringer's got a patch bay, quarter-inch
patch bay, and the half-normaling, normal, fully
normal switch is on the top.
And there are these little slider switches that
move really easily.
And so it's in a rack and you're
trying to pull this thing out and you're
trying to pull it out in such a
way that you don't pull every jack out
the back of it.
So inevitably what you do is you put
(05:45):
your hands behind it and you try to
push it out from the jacks behind, but
you put your hands down there and then
you move every single normaling switch.
And you're like, oh my goodness, that's bad.
I don't even, like, you have to go
back to your design and figure out which
one went where, worst designer.
Well, I mean, I was asking Audient, before
we hit record, I was asking Andrew if
the plus 10 mode was engaged.
(06:06):
So apparently, I'm looking at the console, a
screenshot of the Audient ID console, and I'm
not seeing that plus 10 feature.
But maybe it's the smaller ID 4 or
one of the other products.
But I know for a fact, some of
the Audients have a plus 10 boost.
So that can get in your way too.
(06:27):
So another thing we talked about is the
fact that, and this is a little bit
getting in the weeds, because it really only
involves this interface.
What's unique about the Audient ID 44 and
the 22 and some others they make is
they have what's called a send and a
return jack.
And those are handy because now you can
(06:48):
insert audio through what's called the return jack
and bypass the internal preamp.
So that means you have one less point
of failure or another knob to fiddle with.
You just go from your external preamp into
return, which is also a balanced connection, by
the way, and you're bypassing a whole section
(07:10):
of the circuit.
The gain.
So you don't have to worry about, yeah,
another gain knob to worry about.
Yeah.
So that's something we're going to send you
home, Andrew, and have you report back on
the next show and tell us what fixed
it.
A, twisting the jacks, or B, connecting to
the return jack.
So George, curious, are those sends half normaled?
(07:33):
My understanding is they're half normal.
Can you plug into the send?
So if you plug into send, it's going
to interrupt the signal path.
No, it won't interrupt.
It will send it without interrupting it.
Correct.
It's half normal.
Yes, it's half normal.
What he's explaining.
So it's like a Y.
Yeah, the send jack on the back is
sort of like a splitter.
(07:53):
So if you have a mic plugged into
an input, you can plug something into the
send jack that you want to send audio
to.
Now, I used to use these occasionally as
a phone patch.
Like a direct out.
Yeah, just to send the mic preamp out
to a phone hybrid or an ISDN box
or something else you have to send the
(08:13):
audio to.
Kind of handy.
I'll give you the funny trick.
So the same send return when it's TRS,
so all on one jack, and so the
separate send returns?
Yeah, that's a different thing we're describing.
Right.
With the old Mackies, I think they reversed
the send and the return so that you
could purposely plug the quarter inch jack halfway
in, not break the signal, and get a
(08:37):
direct out.
Yeah, that's right.
I remember setting that up for people.
Another cool hack with those insert jacks on
the Mackie boards is my dad helped me
build these little mic mute speaker mute boxes.
And so they had one quarter inch cable
that went into the insert, and then they
had a pair of quarter inch ins and
(08:57):
outs for the monitor's amp.
So between the input and the output to
the speakers.
And so when you flick the switch in
one position, the monitors were muted, but the
signal would pass through the send return jack.
You flick the switch, and it would cut
the signal to the microphone, cutting off your
mic, and turn on the speakers.
(09:17):
Does that remind you of anything?
Radio broadcast people?
A few things, maybe.
Yes, it does.
Yeah, he did that with an insert jack?
Yeah, yeah.
I still have a couple of these boxes
laying around.
I will actually have to listen to our
episode again and listen to that again to
follow that, because I was not totally following
that.
(09:39):
So just to really quickly summarize, there's a
quarter inch, the back of the box my
dad would make, has five quarter inch jacks.
One of them is strictly for the insert
jack, and the other two are ins and
outs for the left and right monitor speakers.
So it goes between the monitor output of
(09:59):
the mixer, or the control room out, as
they call them on the Mackie, to your
speakers or your amps.
And then your insert cable, which is a
standard tip ring sleeve quarter inch balanced cable,
goes to the other jack.
It's an unbalanced insert cable, right?
It's technically unbalanced.
The cable is a balanced cable, but it's
doing two jobs, sending audio to and from
(10:21):
the jack.
It's a weird thing.
And so all you're doing is breaking the
connection between one set of jacks and the
other, depending on which position the switch is
in.
And that way you never have to worry
about your microphone feeding back with your monitor
speakers.
So whenever your mic is on, the monitors
are off, and vice versa.
So it was just a handy tool, and
(10:43):
it's what they use in radio station consoles
all the time, where the jack, you know,
hits their on button, and the big giant
speakers shut off the second they start talking.
You know, that's common.
So the switch was picking between the tip
and the sleeve?
Is that what it was switching between?
Yeah, I don't remember what electronically was going
on, but it was just breaking the connection.
So if you broke the connection between the
(11:05):
return, the signal wouldn't return back into the
board, and so it wouldn't pass a signal.
It was just dead.
Yeah, wouldn't go to the speakers.
Yep.
So that was a fun little project.
Talk about a tangent.
And talk about a niche topic as well,
because the fact that I've got these external
preamps running through an ID44 is kind of
(11:25):
weird and kind of niche.
And you're just lucky.
Well, Andrew, the other thing you can try
is see if you get the same problem
with a different preamp.
So the whole thing with troubleshooting is always
to pick a point and change something and
see if the problem happens to the left
or right of where you changed something.
So if you change the preamp, and you
(11:48):
still get that gain problem changing, or, you
know, one day it's minus 10, the other
day it's plus 20, or whatever the difference
is, then you know the problem is not
your preamp and it's everything after the preamp.
So you've ruled out your microphone, and you've
ruled out the preamp.
Or if you use a different preamp, and
you still have the same problem, then you
(12:09):
know the problem is probably your microphone, because
it happened with a different preamp, and therefore
it's nothing from the preamp after.
So that's called binary reduction, and it's really
a great way to troubleshoot.
I didn't know it was called binary reduction,
good to know.
I just called it process elimination.
But yeah, you only want to change one
variable at a time.
That's the really crucial thing.
(12:29):
If you don't change one component at a
time...
But change something in the middle.
If you change something in the middle, you've
now isolated to half the thing.
If you start at the beginning, you have
to do all the variables.
But if you start in the middle, then
you only have to do half of them
on the next test.
And if you split that in half, you
(12:49):
only have to do half of those in
the next test.
So if you keep on splitting it in
the middle, you'll speed up your troubleshooting.
Beautiful.
Well, that's my wig sorted then.
That's a good one.
That's stuff you learn the hard way if
you're working in big studios with thousands of
connectors.
Yes.
Yeah, exactly.
When there's like 8 million points in between,
you're like, which one of these 80 is
it?
(13:09):
I'm going to pick point number 40.
Now I'll know if it's point 1 to
40 or 40 to 80.
Instead of starting at 1 and going through
everything linearly.
Interesting.
Good point.
I hope that helps.
Well, that's interesting because the reason with the
ID44 that I went for TRS was because
if I'd gone XLR, then I'd be going
(13:29):
using what I thought.
Go back to what I was getting at.
I thought if I use an XLR into
the ID44, I'd be using the internal preamp,
hence went for the DI with the TRS.
The preamp still works, which is kind of
annoying.
I was hoping I was bypassing it.
But if I go into the return on
(13:50):
channels 1 and 2.
It's so interesting.
Each company has a different...
If it's the line in, it's still hitting
that preamp.
Yeah.
Each company has a different opinion on how
to do that.
Like the Apogee Duet, weirdly, didn't do it
that way.
And it made me scratch my head more
than one time when I plugged in a
quarter inch thinking that was the line in.
(14:11):
And that was not the line in.
It was the guitar or instrument in.
Oh, it was the low Z in.
Yeah, you had to use the XLR as
the line in.
And then there was a setting in the
software inside their console that would switch it.
No, it was like literally not just a
pad, I don't think.
Well, maybe it was.
But it would switch modes and then it
(14:33):
was a line input.
But it was not logical to me at
all.
And to make matters worse, I rigged up
a piece of gear for somebody a couple
of weeks ago that's an audio video capture
device.
And it had two mic inputs, XLR and
quarter inch.
They were reversed.
The XLR was line in, the quarter inch
(14:53):
was the mic in.
And I was like, who in the hell
designed this thing?
Is phantom power out a quarter inch?
Is sending phantom power out a quarter inch?
That's definitely not.
No, it didn't have phantom power.
It didn't even have phantom power.
That speaks to the level of gear.
Yeah, well, that's the problem with video gear
that adds audio.
And it's made for corporate users.
(15:15):
So it was like a $1,500 piece
of gear.
It was expensive.
And yet it had those two reversed and
no phantom power.
So we still had to use a Rodecaster
mixer to give it a proper mic input.
It was a crazy discovery that I did
not think to read the manual because, you
know, you sort of assume, you know.
(15:38):
I mean, these days phantom power is like
kind of assumed for.
You can buy a $30 USB interface with
phantom power, but this $1,500 device with
two mic inputs had no phantom power.
It was just, it just bizarre to me.
And yeah, so never assume and with in
doubt.
That just makes you want to go back
to the design meeting for that one.
(16:00):
Yeah, RTFM, read the freaking manual.
What's that?
What's a manual?
Is that like a car you drive a
manual?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's got a dog leg.
The dog leg is called no phantom power.
Yeah, exactly.
That dog leg is cocked in the end.
(16:20):
Well, that was fun.
Is it over?
The Pro Audio Suite.
With thanks to Tribooth and Austrian Audio.
Recorded using Source Connect.
Edited by Andrew Peters.
And mixed by Robbo.
Got your own audio issues?
Just ask Robbo.com.
With tech support from George the Tech Whittam.
Don't forget to subscribe to the show and
join in the conversation on our Facebook group.
(16:42):
To leave a comment, suggest a topic, or
just say g'day, drop us a note at
our website, theproaudiosuite.com.
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