If stereo isn't important, which for getting
Power Point or educational video out to the masses in a classroom or aud, there's a real cheap fix you can do.
Use a "Y" cable to go 1/8" mini to a pair of 1/4" and
plug that into the in AND out off a
direct box. The trick is to add a pair of 1000
ohm resistors to each of the 1/4" inputs inside the box. The resistors should cost about US$2 for a dozen or so at Radio Shack and you can have the mod done in about five minutes.
While adding a
resistor is not a true
impedance match, it does isolate the two sides from one another, thus eliminating phasing and loss due to cancellation and attenuates the
level enough to run through the DI without distorting. Also, having them in-line doesn't drastically
effect the performance of the DI when being used on a single,
mono source. While the lab coat types can probably quote you figures on what this actually does to the sound quality, I've been mixing for 15 years and my ears weren't able to detect any difference at all through a
system. (I thought there might
possibly have been a slight difference in the
headphones). And really, what else are you going to use that thing for except to insert some low buck, poorly adjusted teenage
bass player's floppy sounding rig?
While this is far from the ideal situation it does have the following merrits:
- You save having to use two channels to get the stereo source to the desk.
- A lot of venues and small systems are run in mono anyway, so why burn the channel?
- If you have to make any number of these, it's a good deal cheaper because it cuts the number of impedance matching devices (DIs) you have to buy in half.
- You could go even cheaper by using a simple in-line matcher such as the ones sold at Radio Shack for about US$15 and incorporate the resistors directly into the "Y" cables with some careful cutting and shrink wrap. (Make sure you lable them)