DI Boxes...

[guitarguru777]

You mean Countryman + Saffire mic in sounds better than Saffire instrument in ?

Well it is possible if the mic in has some better opamp and converter and/or if the instrument in has some really inferior impedance matching electronics.

But the difference has to be really small.

If that's what hes saying its BS cause its the same damn input ....lol

I really just think the difference they are hearing is Balanced VS Unbalanced Cabling.

 

[guitarguru777]

Sorry to piggyback the thread but I have a Focusrite Scarlett and will be picking up a used Countryman soon, and was just wondering how to connect it to the interface.

So far from what I can work out -

Guitar cable -> Countryman -> XLR cable to XLR input

I then switch the input to LINE and use the preamps gain control to get my level?? Is that that the best way?

At the moment I have found that Im occasionally clipping the Hi-Z input if I dig in towards the bridge, so Im using my Bad Monkey stomp and running from the MIxerOut into the Scarlett which keeps the peaks at 0, but I seem to be averaging around -1.5 which from what Ive read is a bit too high.

Stop recording your DI's with the bad monkey. Use if when you Re-amp only. Its pointless to put it before the PRE as it will color the sound of the bad monkey and make it sound very different, same is true of any DI or instrument input. DI''s are meant to be TOTALLY dry to avoid preamp coloration as much as possible.

 

[JHA]

If that's what hes saying its BS cause its the same damn input ....lol

I really just think the difference they are hearing is Balanced VS Unbalanced Cabling.

From the manual: "When connecting a Microphone to the Saffire Pro 24, you must connect an XLR cable to the Combi inputs on the front panel. When
connecting either Line level signal or Instrument signal to the combi inputs, you must select either Line or Inst from the preamp
section."

Looking from specs the instrument input impedance is 1Mohm but they don't say what the mic/line input inpedance is. Who knows what the switch does but I've never seen 1Mohm line/mic inputs, so I'd assume it switches to lower impedance and less gain for line and more for mic input.

With Countryman the impedance matching is done with a high quality transformer instead of op-amps so it's very well possible to get better results. Though I'd say the guitar (and the player!) used affects the end result more.

 

[deLuther]

Impedance of 10 MOhm in not possible with transformer (even 1 MOhm), only with active electronics... Transformer also does not suffer from maximum input level, Countryman Type 85 have 5 Vpp level, Type 10 have 6 Vpp level, that`s is usual for op-amps based DI-boxes, transformer DI-boxes can handle more...