| I got my hands on an Ultralite mk3, so I thought I would pass on some info to anybody who was interested. First off, I was wrong about even needing a DI from the TD-20. The ultralite mk3 takes balanced or unbalanced signals into its inputs. Since the TD-20 is line level, plugging into the back 1/4" jacks works just fine.
As for the 2 instrument/mic inputs, according to the manual, there are a number of things that can be connected such as condenser mics, dynamic mics, guitars, -10db line level via TRS, -10db line level vs xlr, +4db line level xlr. However, it recommends that if you are plugging in +4db line level, to use one of the back 1/4" inputs. Although Roland doesn't seem to publish much about the 8 outputs on the back, I believe they are -10db unbalanced. If I take all 8 directly into the Ultralite, I'm able to adjust the trim to get adequate levels on every sound. The only thing is the 2 instrument inputs which are a tad hot at full volume from the TD-20 mixer. I compensated for this by turning the Crash L and Crash R chanels (which were plugged into the 2 instrument inputs), down a bit on the mixer to get a max level of about -6db. I also tried a condenser mic and a electric guitar into the input, and both worked perfectly after setting the 48v power and pad switches accordingly. So it seems that these instrument inputs truly are multi use.
MOTU could avoid a lot of confusion by releasing its manuals to potential buyers. If you go on their website and make an account, they want you to buy the manual which is lame.
As a side note, the ultralite mk3 was a breeze to set up on my macbook pro - everything worked perfectly.
Thanks. |