New User, and All I have are balanced cables

[Morgenspaziergang]

DSI Family,

I your series of videos on your YT channel, you suggest using unbalanced cables for the output.

All I have are balanced cables.

Will this cause any issues with using the Tempest with my mixing desk? The desk will accept balanced or unbalanced, so im not worried about the desk side, just wondering if any issues will occur (sound wise?) on the Tempest side.

Thank you in advance for any help. The machine is in transit to me, so until then I am preparing myself for its arrival.

Cheers and greetings from Los Angeles!

-Marc

[BobTheDog]

You should be ok with the main outs.

The individual voice outs will not be ok though, for those you need a TRS to two TS lead as they are stereo outs.

[Morgenspaziergang]

thank you for the response.

can you provide a link to amazon for these? and for all 6 outputs, how many would I need? i am guessing 6?

I cant find a setup video showing the cabling. so I need to plug the TRS side at the tempest then the TS leads go to separate channels on the mixer? please pardon my ignorance here.

thank you in advance!


EDIT: are these it?

http://www.amazon.com/Hosa-Cable-STP203-Dual-Insert/dp/B000068O1P

[BobTheDog]

Yep, thats the sort of thing.

Here is some background on how it all works:

The hardware side
===========

The man voice outs are stereo on two mono jacks L and R.

The voice outs are also stereo but are on one stereo jack. (Some people do use a TS (mono) lead to connect these outputs to their mixers but then you need to hard pan the voice in the tempest for it to work)

If you plug a cable into a voice out then that voice is removed from the main outs by the tempest

The software side
===========
By default the tempest uses dynamic allocation of voices, so lets day you have a bass drum, a snare and a High Hat going on. Each of these sounds may play on different voices depending on whats going on.

You can also allocate a sound to a particular voice. Say the Bass Drum to voice 1. Then the tempest would use voice 1 for the Bass Drum and voices 2-6 for the Snare and High Hat.


This all can lead to a bit of confusion amongst new users, for example if you get 6 of those cables and connect them up to your mixer and the tempest you will not get any output on the main outs and the sounds will seem to play on random channels in your mixer as the tempest is dynamically allocating the voices and moving them around.

The best way for you to start is to take your existing TRS cables and connect up the main outs and leave the voice outs alone for a while, once you have the hang of how everything works and you want to process individual sounds outside of the tempest then you can start connecting up the voice outputs and setting that sounds output to a particular voice. For example lets say you want to add a compressor to the Bass Drum, you would connect up say voice 1 to your mixer and allocate voice 1 to the Bass Drum sound on the tempest. Now the Bass drum will always be on voice 1 and all the other sounds will be going out of the main outs.

[Morgenspaziergang]

proper.

so in theory, if i want to utilize the individual outs and forgo using the main, i can grab 6 of these cables,  and they will use 12 inputs on the desk/console correct?

then when i am constructing a "project" and I am using  6 sounds, i can force them to each channel as i please correct?

this is what i am used to doing on my akai s950 and on the mpc (sold the mpc to get the tempest) is to assign individual outs.

if i ONLY use the individual outs, i ASSume the compressor and distortion thats on board the tempest will NOT be routable to individual outs correct? and if so, it would be wise to JUST use individual outs on an AS needed basis since you lose some functionality (i.e. compressor and distortion are hard patched to the main outs) of some features if solely using the individual outs...

im still a bit confused on something....

so if i use the above mentioned TRS to mono TS cable on individual out one of the tempest, the other two TS ends will go into channel one and two on the desk/console.

i ASSIGN a kick drum to it.

is it necessary to hard-pan the channels ? meaning should i pan ch 1 on the desk to left and ch 2 on the desk to right? or should the channels be at 12 o clock on the pan knob?

one more question.

example, the MPC has mono outs so that one sound uses one cable in one channel.

the tempest has STEREO individual outs which means you can add effects, etc to make that one mono sound coming out to have stereo effects?

does that make sense?

ill dig into the manual more tomorrow. Im pickin' up what you're layin' down thus far but i just need a bit more understanding on these individual outs, as it seems its best NOT to use them?

[BobTheDog]

proper.

so in theory, if i want to utilize the individual outs and forgo using the main, i can grab 6 of these cables,  and they will use 12 inputs on the desk/console correct?

Yep

then when i am constructing a "project" and I am using  6 sounds, i can force them to each channel as i please correct?

yep

this is what i am used to doing on my akai s950 and on the mpc (sold the mpc to get the tempest) is to assign individual outs.

if i ONLY use the individual outs, i ASSume the compressor and distortion thats on board the tempest will NOT be routable to individual outs correct? and if so, it would be wise to JUST use individual outs on an AS needed basis since you lose some functionality (i.e. compressor and distortion are hard patched to the main outs) of some features if solely using the individual outs...

yep

im still a bit confused on something....

so if i use the above mentioned TRS to mono TS cable on individual out one of the tempest, the other two TS ends will go into channel one and two on the desk/console.

i ASSIGN a kick drum to it.

is it necessary to hard-pan the channels ? meaning should i pan ch 1 on the desk to left and ch 2 on the desk to right? or should the channels be at 12 o clock on the pan knob?

The voices in the tempest are stereo, so you would treat your 2 mixer inputs as a stereo pair. Then you can alter the pan in the sound on the tempest to position it. In this case you would hard pan L&R on the mixer.

Or you can pan sounds hard left or hard right on the Tempest and then get 12 outputs and treat the two mixer channels as two different sounds. This is only useful if you know that the two sounds are never going to be played at the same time. In this case you would use the mixer pan to position.

one more question.

example, the MPC has mono outs so that one sound uses one cable in one channel.

the tempest has STEREO individual outs which means you can add effects, etc to make that one mono sound coming out to have stereo effects?

As mentioned above if you hard pan the sounds in the tempest you can treat them as mono.

If you have it set up as stereo , i.e. not panned hard left or right you would need to use a stereo FX, or maybe I am not understanding you?

does that make sense?

ill dig into the manual more tomorrow. Im pickin' up what you're layin' down thus far but i just need a bit more understanding on these individual outs, as it seems its best NOT to use them?

The individual outs are useful if you want to individually process sounds externally from the Tempest otherwise stick to the main outs.

[Morgenspaziergang]

I see now. Thank you for being so kind and generous with your time and hand holding.

If I may ask,

I ASSume you have a tempest?

If you do, how do you have yours wired?

I understand about the note choking/voice stealing that goes on. That I understand.

Thanks again.....

[BobTheDog]

No Problem.

But I have a insert snake a bit like this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seismic-Audio-SAST-8-16-10-Channel-Insert/dp/B0053TLOGW going to a patch-bay and also the main outs going to the same patch-bay.

Usually I have only the main outs connected for messing around, If I want to process or record individual tracks I insert the cables into the voices on the tempest.

If the tempest didn't remove the voice from the main outs when a cable is connected I would keep it all connected up all the time, this does annoy me I wish they had have done this via software instead.

[Morgenspaziergang]

Mr Bob,

That was what I had hoped you would say !!   

Meaning most of the time the main outs are just fine and the individual outs only when you need to process a voice more than what the box can do.

this is a different mode of thinking as I have used patchbays all my recording life and always used the individual outs FIRST and rarely ever used the mains on the mpc and s950.

so it makes sense to use the main outs here as opposed to using the "voices" out of the gate. i understand things much much better now.

Thank you sir for your helpful responses.

[BobTheDog]

No problem, glad to help.

I hope you enjoy the Tempest, I think it's an amazing little box of goodies.

[Morgenspaziergang]

Yes sir. I know I will.

I picked up some of those prophet knobs for the tempest too! Gives the box and old 70s look to it..

Thanks again sir....

[RobH]

Wow I'm glad i read this!

I only have balanced too lmao, i tried to run a voice with a kick into my compressor the other day and thought my compressor was broken, i kinda forgot about it and carried on with other things, but kinda makes sense now lmao!