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[Yan Ovtchinikov]

Hey guys got a little tricky small problem here, but hope someone maybe from past experience or good knowledge could help me regarding this.

Problem is, our church has just got the ART S8 3WAY 8-channel mic splitter. We run our signals that come from stage, via a snake, into the rack, in which the ART S8 unit is mounted. From the ART unit, we took a direct out signal and that went into the desk channels, and the other TRANSFORMER ISOLATED output into a preamp unit, which then went into a HD24.

Aim was to split signals, one set of signals goin to the desk, the other to the HD24 recording unit, ofcourse via a preamp unit.

All worked fine, But only thing that did not was a wireless mic did not sound good. We have an old AKG cheap wirless system, which includes a hand held mic, and a reciever unit, that stands on stage and the output jack from that goes into the stagebox.

When we connected all that, all other microphones on stage sounded fine, but this wireless mic sounded as if it had a strong HPF on it. Any suggestions? or ideas as to why this would happen?

And Yes we have global Phantom power applied to all channels.
And Yes everything is balanced.

[DaveGetting]

Does the mic sound bad on both the desk and the recording?

Did you try a different channel on the S8?

[Yan Ovtchinikov]

The mic sounds bad on the desk, it sounds as if a HPF has been put on the mic and the cutoff frequency been set to 800Hz.

I havn't tried any other channels on the splitter yet, but as soon as i come in next time i will plug it into another channel and seee if any change.

For some reason i doubt its that channel though, i mean a splitter circuit is pretty simple. I just have no clue as to why that wireless mic sounds bad, and all others sound good.

[DaveGetting]

I guess the other option would be to plug it direct into the desk and see if it still sounds bad.  I was under the impression it only started to sound bad after adding the splitter to the mix.

[Yan Ovtchinikov]

Yh it is the spliiter, if the mic is plugged directly into the desk, it sounds fine. Once it goes through the splitters, its as if its going through a HPF, there is only one factor that i think that plays a roll and that is phantom power, but i see just realli dont see how that could affect it. Most likely it is the channel, ill be going into rehearsal today, and ill try and play around with different channels and see if it still sounds the same.

[Mats Fagerkull]

Yan Ovtchinikov wrote on Wed, 09 September 2009 16:35

Yh it is the spliiter, if the mic is plugged directly into the desk, it sounds fine. Once it goes through the splitters, its as if its going through a HPF, there is only one factor that i think that plays a roll and that is phantom power, but i see just realli dont see how that could affect it. Most likely it is the channel, ill be going into rehearsal today, and ill try and play around with different channels and see if it still sounds the same.

If the problem isn't related to one specific channel:

Well since the reciever usually is made to put out (line) signal it may not really expecting to get fed by phantom power, if that is the case. Cheaper equipment may handle that less good than one wish for.....

Try to switch of the phantom power, the reciever doesn't need this, and see what happens.

Are you using XLR or 1/4 TRS?

If using 1/4 TRS the reason it works fine directly at the desk might be that you are not feeding phantom power, either directly by choice or indirectly because the line input at the desk doesn't put out phantom power. At the splitter it might be that phantom power is supplied both through mic and line in.

If you are using XLR and putting out phantom power both at disk and splitter but with different result then I have no clue.

/mats

[Yan Ovtchinikov]

Yes it an XLR input, and the ART unit is not fed by any power, as its a simple standalone splitter, it just splits the signal 3 ways.

I found a similar diagram of the circuit on this forums other post, about a similar unit, but slightly different.

[Dan Costello]

Did you find out if the problem is related to just the one channel on the splitter or if it happens on all of them?

I had a similar problem once coming from the 1/4" outputs on a summing mixer. W/o reading the manual, I assumed the outputs were balanced, and used a TRS-XLR snake to connect it to whatever other gear I was using at the time. The low end was gone and there was a bit of distortion. Turns out that the outputs weren't balanced and when I switched to a TS-XLR adapter (that takes pin 3 on the XLR and shunts it to ground), everything was fine. Some gear can handle these discrepancies and some can't.

-Dan.

[Yan Ovtchinikov]

Well when i will get in next time, ill check the mic with other chanels, last time i was there i had to redo all the vocals and monitors because of a few changes, so i only had enough time to check the outputs of the splitter. This sunday hopefully ill try and check it this problem is on other channels too.

Thing is the splitter is all XLR's, and all are balanced, i never order unbalanced XLR's.

[Mats Fagerkull]

Yan Ovtchinikov wrote

Yes it an XLR input, and the ART unit is not fed by any power, as its a simple standalone splitter, it just splits the signal 3 ways.

OK, then it shouldn't be phantom power. Reason I asked was that it sounded to me like as if phantom power was added at the splitter ( active splitter) but you're just using a passive one.

Yan Ovtchinikov wrote

Thing is the splitter is all XLR's, and all are balanced, i never order unbalanced XLR's.

Well, the important part Dan is talking about is the *output* on the reciever. Is that a balanced XLR or is it 1/4? If it is a 1/4 then it can be just as Dan describes. This would probably be the easiest to fix, just do as Dan did.

But if it is just one bad channel in the splitterbox, or the splitter cable then at first try to just move the wireless to another channel in the splitterbox. If that makes a differance then you should leave the working connection wireless-splitter as is and take the splitter cable which is connected to the "bad" channel and make that as connection between "good" splitterbox channel-mixer. Will tell you if it is the splitterbox channel or splitter cable.

If none of this work it may be the snake from stage which got a faulty channel.  

Good luck / mats

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