Ok, I've read the rane balanced cable wiring and seen the diagrams at their technical notes:
http://www.rane.com/note110.html
It may be because I'm not a native speaker, but what exactly is tying the cable shield to the metal chassis right where it enters the chassis??
What I understand from this is the following. Let's say I want to connect an Akai sampler (which has balanced outputs) to my Metric Halo audio interface (which has switchable balanced, line, mic and unbalanced inputs).
I should build my interconnect cable using twisted pair cable (Mogami or other) and wiring the TRS connectors as per the diagram. In able to follow the directions, I should remove the cover of my sampler and wire the internal connectors' shield with a tiny cable; drill a hole in my sampler's metal encasing and attach the cable to this hole using a small screw with a toothed washer, thus completing the "chassis ground" diagram. Am I somewhere near the actual truth??
How about if my sampler has 8 balanced outputs? I should do the same and tie the 8 internal shields with 8 separate cables to a single point in the chassis ground?
Is the chassis grounding also achieved by tying the shield to, say a metal rack enclosure? I read somewhere that this may or may not be true, depending on the rack/rails type of metal and paint job.
On another subject. What is the correct way of chassis grounding (or any type of grounding) for gear that uses wall warts? I mean, there is no ground prong, and many of these decives are unbalanced, so the internal connectors don't have a shield. I have some gear that uses wall warts. i know the wall warts should be as far away from audio lines. But is that it? If I wire all my studio with the star grounding technique, should I have a separate circuit and outlet for this type of devices? should this separate outlet be tied or not to the common ground for the rest of my studio??
Thanks for any help on this matter!
Regards,
Rodrigo Montfort