Incredibly Vague DI Questions

Imagine, if you will, that you have a set-up that involves two keyboards and at least three pocket synths, all of which would normally require an individual direct input on stage. Being afraid of soundmen being cross at you, would it be at all worth investing in any sort of DI box for yourself? Is there a good multi-input device out there? Is there any use for them for home recording or would it be purely a live situation investment? Or would you just man up and be all 'whatevz, dude, this is my shizzle and you have to deal with it'?

i think it's absolutely worth having one's own DI (or several) - if at least to avoid having to use the piece of shit behringer (or worse) ones that most venues supply

if you have a bunch of your own line level equipment it might be worth getting a little mixer to have on stage with you that everything goes into

ignore "line level" there

Something like this would prolly be just the thing for you. http://www.mackie.com/products/1202vlz3/

I've never really ran live sound but I think if I were a soundperson and I came across a band with the kind of instrumentation you mention, I'd be surprised (and possibly a lil cross, tbh) if there was no mixer in that set up somewhere.

Thanks for the tips, guys. I guess a mixer is probably going to be the way to go, yeah. That mackie looks awesome but arrrgh, way out of my price range. With a little searching, though, it looks like you can get slightly smaller/more restricted functionality versions for a fair bit cheaper.

as a person who does do live sound, keyboard players with their own mixers are the best surprise in the world. also it means that A)you will only tie up 2 channels on the house board which is always nice B) you can establish your mix the way it is supposed to sound/not have something turned down when you start playing it.

http://www.peavey.com/products/proaudio/loudspeakers/impulse/index.cfm/item/116340/PV%26reg%3B10USB.cfm

worth looking at depending on how many stereo channels you need/usefulness of usb for recording/internal effects unit.

theres also a pv6usb that loses the effects and some channels but sells for $130 US

Hm. Okay, now I'm starting to think that the best thing to do is get a really good one first thing, rather than a smaller thing that I'll undoubtedly outgrow. But in that case I may well have to wait for a bit longer to actually make a purchase.

http://www.peavey.com/products/proaudio/mixers/pv/index.cfm/item/116922/PV%26nbsp%3B6%26nbsp%3BUSB.html

there are secondhand deals out there. got a great deal on an 80s soundcraft desk recently for this very purpose

Oooh, that last one jjj posted looks just about right to me. Not too unwieldy, but not sacrificing too much.

As another former soundperson, yes yes yes, get your own mixer. That way you can figure out and set your own relative levels on your own.

peaveys are decent starter equipment. Behringers are also ok.

This is for a new band who aren't ready to play yet - with the old band I always just had two keyboards, which never seemed to annoy anyone at all. But yeah, adding in even a couple of extra things seems like a headache for the soundperson. If I did end up playing a couple of shows before being able to afford a mixer, would it be a particularly shitty thing for me to do, from your experience? Or just an inconvenience I should rectify as soon as I can?

it depends on the venue. the number of inputs tends to be less of a headache than the "do you/we have long enough cables?" issue.

I bought an 80s A+H desk for this recently. It's way cool (if a little bulky) and has awesome bubble writing on it.

i've got a similar setup and a cheap (under $100) mackie mixer has been the way to go. i also got some cheap DI's just in case, but i stopped bringing them to gigs because i never had to use them.

So I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a mixer for live shows, seeing as this stuff is actually happening now. I figure I can probably handle a 4-channel mixer as I'm playing with one keyboard and a bunch of small things that I can swap around. But the more I look at descriptions the more I realise I have totally no idea what half of them are even talking about.

Like, for a set-up as I described above, would this work? Would it kind of work but not be that good? http://www.gak.co.uk/en/behringer-xenyx-1202/1069

What about this one? http://www.gak.co.uk/en/ashton-mxl6-6-channel-compact-mixer/76228

This? http://www.gak.co.uk/en/alto-zmx862-compact-mixer/51484

?????? http://www.gak.co.uk/en/alesis-multimix-8-usb-fx/42590

i think any of those would totally work, depending on how many ins you need for the additional small synths. are any of them going through each other, or are they all separate instruments? do they (the small things) have mono or stereo outs?

then you'll just run two 1/4" outs out of your mixer going to the PA, or at least that's what i do.

did you want something you could also plug into a computer? The alesis seems like the best bet -- with the 2nd and 3rd one you'd be maxing out the inputs, and sometimes it's nicer to just have everything plugged in, rather than switch things up mid-set. I have a smaller behringer that I'm pretty content with -- they get bad raps, but they are pretty functional and reliable, besides being cheaper than Mackies.

yeah i'm still using my cheap behringer (i don't know why i said mackie above), works fine. also i did end up using those DIs on a gig once (because it was a bunch of electronic dudes who were all set up at once), and then i left them at the venue and never got them back.

All mono, all (currently) separate. For the record, the gear I'm currently using is a monotron, a contact mic'd Gakken mini-theremin, walkman, iPod (lame I know, but easier to carry around my pre-worked noize samples on that than anything else I own). Also have Gakken synth and (modern) stylophone, but I've yet to need them on stage.

In terms of plugging into a computer - it's not necessary but would be nice. Would that require one of the mixers that specifies USB or is it doable with others? I do feel like a thickie at the moment, but honestly I'm just blanking when trying to read up on this stuff.

then i think any of those would work (although sure, it might be nice to have some spare inputs).

even without usb you could go from your mixer -> inputs of your computer audio interface if you wanted to.

your setup sounds dope btw, would love to hear it.

i think the issue would be if you want to be able to do multitrack recording through the mixer, rather than just having a stereo input.

and the ipod thing -- hey, no shame in that -- I did the same thing. Depending on how you work them into your set, you might want to upgrade to a sampler at some point -- bigger buttons are good if you are combining music performance and alcohol consumption

Haha, that is very true. As it stands, I'm not having to manipulate that much during songs so it's not that problematic, but even then it can be annoyingly fiddly with sweaty-nervous hands.

Thanks loads for your advice, guys. The GAK shop is actually not very far from me, so I'll probably go in and look/touch/see if there's a difference in price in-store before making my final decisions.

also the clicky sound the iPod makes when switching tracks

you can turn that off i think

http://https%3A//encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images%3Fq%3Dtbn%3AANd9GcSC_2eDuKY5TD29ivQ2x3ozZGNze5z-Cotn3LwzhkNa6gJxYLmz

?

i bought one of these http://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Behringer-Xenyx-Q1002USB-Premium-10-Input-2-Bus-Mixer/L8M which seems to be perfectly fine as a standard mixer, but the usb output is bloody terrible - so much noise added to the signal and a very erratic relationship with both ableton and audacity. i checked the behringer website for their 'free recording and editing software' and it was just audacity. lol behringer.

but yeh i guess i'm still in the position of needing a way to connect to my laptop that doesn't add tonnes of noise, as the basic line in i'm still stuck with does. what should i do?

would something like http://www.gak.co.uk/en/alesis-linelink/18291?gclid=CKq-p4KdpLoCFfMctAodXA4AIg work or would it be likely to add yet more noise to the chain?

is your laptop a pc?

yeah.

you might want to look at the usb audio driver, try reinstalling it or switching it out for something like asio4all.

hm, the reinstall did nothing and asio4all is just as dodgy and twitchy in different ways. maybe my computer is to blame and i should give up on the usb idea.

is it multi-track or just a stereo pair?

just stereo pair. i figured out that a good deal of the sound issue seems to have been from having both laptop and mixer plugged into the same mains outlet, but it's still not perfect, and the other problems - causing audacity and ableton to crash, shutting off the laptops audio output - are manageable but quite annoying...

audacity used to crash regularly on my old computer. it has never done so on this one with the current version of the program, but it can be unstable.

have you considered just getting a digital recorder, recording to that, and then transferring the files to the computer to edit?

i got all of my sound settings into such a mess that i decided a system restore to a few days ago was the best way out of it so errrrr yeah i should probably investigate other options. at least until i can get someone knowledgeable to help me out in person.

I would try a different board before going much more drastic. The peavey pv6usb has worked well for me (or any of the other USB out peavey mixers depending on what you need for channels. The behringer one has been uh problematic for people I knew, being as diplomatic as I can about it.

The computer ought to see the board as a hard drive in most cases, not an audio device, FYI.

Or possibly as an outboard sound card.

can you upload an example of the noise?

what are you running in to the mixer?

first things i do: battery vs psu on laptop. change psu of mixer. touch metal stuff on everything that's plugged in. check your gain staging: does it still have noise if you record, your cd player, for example through it, or a decent mic set up with an xlr? is the noise always there?

had an m-box mini that somebody was using the other day and we had to connect a mic input to the case on the mac just to ground it properly, some things are just made a bit shit.

thanks everybody, i got it working to a more acceptable level by doing... something. dunno what. there's still a bit of a high-pitched whine on everything (including when recording the usb output of the mixer when there are no inputs), but i'll put that down to things being made a bit shit until i can get it to a friend who has enough equipment for us to run through all the variables.