Anything Can Be Worked Out If You Just Throw Enough Cables At It
In case you noticed that the site was down all day, a.) don't worry, I won't be gotten rid of so easily, and b.) you need a better way to spend your weekend.
So I picked up that Alesis RA-100 reference amplifier; the seller, Mike, was a super-nice guy, and the thing appears to be a steal. I say "appears to be" because for all I know, it's broken, since I haven't gotten to test it out yet. I am beset with quandries on all sides, in regards to getting this thing hooked up. The main one is that I don't want to give up my regular Creative 5.1 speakers on my computer, but my Soundblaster Audigy card "only" has three line-outs on the back, which are geared towards 5.1 analog speakers, with the connections going to the subwoofer, front R/L, and rear R/L. All of the other outputs from the computer are digital. I have a digital out on the back for digital surround sound speakers, and I have coax and optical SPDIF outs on the Live!Drive. None of which are going to work for running a line to the PA, without some sort of $200-$10000 digital-to-analog converter.
I stopped by Best Buy today to see what sort of options I could find there, and the guy kept telling me that the coaxial SPDIF connector could simply be adapted to a 1/4" plug, and in doing so would convert the signal from digital to analog. That made so little sense to me, that I kinda pressed him on it, and he eventually asked another guy who had been working with audio for 20+ years, who basically told him he was a fool. He almost had me convinced, though, so I'm obviously somewhat of a fool, too.
I started looking at alternate sound output sources, such as a USB video capture system which had RCA inputs/outputs, but I really didn't want to add another sound device, and wasn't sure what kind of sound quality that thing would have anyway. While I do want one of those USB video capture systems, for other reasons, it didn't seem like the answer here.
I finally gave up and bought a printer cartridge and left, after trying to run into my boss, David, who happened to be coming the other way down an aisle, and who appeared to be in an inexplicably jovial mood, which is always good to see. More power to him.
I ended up hopefully settling it at Radio Shack, by creating a Gordian Knot of wiring. Basically, I have the aforementioned three 1/8" line-outs from my soundcard, each of which runs into the back of the Creative subwoofer. I got one of those "choose one of three input devices for one output" switchers, and converted that "center/subwoofer" cable into a pair of RCA cables, which run into the single output of the switcher. Then I run a pair of RCA cables right back out of the first input, and convert that to a 1/8" plug which goes into the subwoofer where the first 1/8" plug was supposed to. A second pair of RCA cables leads from the second input of the switcher, to the Tape In of my Behringer mixer, which is then routed via the control room outs of the mixer to the inputs of the Alesis RA-100.
This should work pretty well, because:
1.) the switcher simply creates a connection between the singled pair of RCA connections, and whichever one of the three other RCA pairs is currently active. It doesn't really matter which you use as input and output. This theory seems to be holding up, as my subwoofer still works just fine.
2.) the mixer has cutoffs for the Tape In inputs, allowing them to be sent to either the Control Room outs, the Main outs, both, or neither. So as long as I don't accidentally send them to the Main outs, I shouldn't have to worry about setting up a closed feedback loop between the mixer and the soundcard (which was a concern, because the mixer's Main outs run directly into the Live!Drive).
I just finished building a pair of speaker cables to run from the PA to the monitors, so I'm almost ready to test this whole configuration. Now, if I could only figure out where the hell I'm going to put the monitors, I'd be in good shape.
Currently listening to: "O Sole Mio", Me First & The Gimme Gimmes
So I picked up that Alesis RA-100 reference amplifier; the seller, Mike, was a super-nice guy, and the thing appears to be a steal. I say "appears to be" because for all I know, it's broken, since I haven't gotten to test it out yet. I am beset with quandries on all sides, in regards to getting this thing hooked up. The main one is that I don't want to give up my regular Creative 5.1 speakers on my computer, but my Soundblaster Audigy card "only" has three line-outs on the back, which are geared towards 5.1 analog speakers, with the connections going to the subwoofer, front R/L, and rear R/L. All of the other outputs from the computer are digital. I have a digital out on the back for digital surround sound speakers, and I have coax and optical SPDIF outs on the Live!Drive. None of which are going to work for running a line to the PA, without some sort of $200-$10000 digital-to-analog converter.
I stopped by Best Buy today to see what sort of options I could find there, and the guy kept telling me that the coaxial SPDIF connector could simply be adapted to a 1/4" plug, and in doing so would convert the signal from digital to analog. That made so little sense to me, that I kinda pressed him on it, and he eventually asked another guy who had been working with audio for 20+ years, who basically told him he was a fool. He almost had me convinced, though, so I'm obviously somewhat of a fool, too.
I started looking at alternate sound output sources, such as a USB video capture system which had RCA inputs/outputs, but I really didn't want to add another sound device, and wasn't sure what kind of sound quality that thing would have anyway. While I do want one of those USB video capture systems, for other reasons, it didn't seem like the answer here.
I finally gave up and bought a printer cartridge and left, after trying to run into my boss, David, who happened to be coming the other way down an aisle, and who appeared to be in an inexplicably jovial mood, which is always good to see. More power to him.
I ended up hopefully settling it at Radio Shack, by creating a Gordian Knot of wiring. Basically, I have the aforementioned three 1/8" line-outs from my soundcard, each of which runs into the back of the Creative subwoofer. I got one of those "choose one of three input devices for one output" switchers, and converted that "center/subwoofer" cable into a pair of RCA cables, which run into the single output of the switcher. Then I run a pair of RCA cables right back out of the first input, and convert that to a 1/8" plug which goes into the subwoofer where the first 1/8" plug was supposed to. A second pair of RCA cables leads from the second input of the switcher, to the Tape In of my Behringer mixer, which is then routed via the control room outs of the mixer to the inputs of the Alesis RA-100.
This should work pretty well, because:
1.) the switcher simply creates a connection between the singled pair of RCA connections, and whichever one of the three other RCA pairs is currently active. It doesn't really matter which you use as input and output. This theory seems to be holding up, as my subwoofer still works just fine.
2.) the mixer has cutoffs for the Tape In inputs, allowing them to be sent to either the Control Room outs, the Main outs, both, or neither. So as long as I don't accidentally send them to the Main outs, I shouldn't have to worry about setting up a closed feedback loop between the mixer and the soundcard (which was a concern, because the mixer's Main outs run directly into the Live!Drive).
I just finished building a pair of speaker cables to run from the PA to the monitors, so I'm almost ready to test this whole configuration. Now, if I could only figure out where the hell I'm going to put the monitors, I'd be in good shape.
Currently listening to: "O Sole Mio", Me First & The Gimme Gimmes
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