Ep. 9 Ed Brooks on Impedance & Interconnecting Gear in the Studio

The Truth About Recording & Mixing

Welcome to Episode 9 of The Truth About Recording & Mixing. This week we take on the topic of impedances and interconnecting all the different formats of gear one finds in the recording studio. Ed Brooks of Resonant Mastering walks us through the different categories of gear, how their impedances and levels differ and how we most successfully interconnect them. We also get a visit from electronics engineer and Spectra Sonics wiz Timothy Herzog who explains the design parameters and uses of his 3301 Hi Impedance Instrument Amplifier.

03:15 - Welcome back Ed Brooks!05:30 - Let’s start with speaker connectors08:30 - Instrument Cable! Wait - what is Impedance and how circuit designers moved from impedance matching to voltage matching.15:30 Instrument & high impedance unbalanced connections.19:30 How does a balanced connection work?27:15 What about RCA or other unbalanced connections?30:00 Back to instruments and hi impedance sources.35:00 How do we get a balanced mic level source into an instrument input?39:00 Instrument cable capacitance and what happens with long cable runs.41:35 Timothy Herzog describes his instrument preamp / buffer pedal.52:30 Connecting +4 balanced sources with instrument level devices - i.e. Reamping.58:00 What about connecting balanced and unbalanced sources?01:05:20 UAD Unison Mic Pre’s - impedance switching? 01:06:15 Listener question about how to measure impedance01:08:50 What about the impedance switches on some mic preamps?01:11:30 How to get mic level signal off of a speaker out.01:14:30 Using headphones or a speaker as a microphone. NS10 kick drum mic!

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The Truth About Recording & Mixing is a bi-weekly podcast produced by the Fretboard Journal magazine, loosely based on our Truth About Vintage Amps Q&A podcast.

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Gear mentioned: Mic to Instrument Impedance transformer, Herzog Electronics 3301 Hi Impedance Instrument Amplifier, Epiphone Firebird, Rickenbacher guitars, Telecaster, Radial Reamper, Aphex 124, Radial J+4 2 Channel Signal Level Transformers, Cloud Lifter preamplifier, Universal Audio OX, Hughes & Kettner Red Box, NS10 Kick Mic, The transformerless SM57!