Digico Mic/Line Cards Stacking preamps w/ Grace

[roonsbane]

Hey Slutz,

Does anyone know if there is a switch on the Digico Mic/Line Cards that bypasses all of the extra circuitry and makes them a simple line level A/D convertor. Recently we have added an 8 channel Grace Preamp at the hall I record at often. This is a preamp that I know very well when coupled with a 16 channel Prism Dream A/D. It was actually a 32 channel system made up of 801R's and M802's but I expect the M801 circuitry to be nearly sonically identical to this new one.

Our new broadcast console is a Digico (DS00) and originally I was very impressed with the sound of the digico preamps before adding the grace. My company decided to buy the M801 as an upgrade. The capital purchase request was put in before ever hearing the digico pre's figuring that of course they would kick butt. Now with the grace the sound seems to need more verb and seems brittle in the roughly 3500Hz-4500Hz range. Again, I never felt this way about the grace before so lets not have this turn into a discussion of how awful you think the grace is.

As a general rule I try and never stack preamps even if they are at their lowest or unity setting. I cannot find an online manual for the I/O boxes and cards, and all I have is the DS00 Manual which says nothing about a jumper or switch. We do have a Rosetta 800 lying around that if I can get a AES snake for I could run into a AES card as a next step of troubleshooting. Of course clocking will then be more complicated on the whole 2 console 4x56 channel I/O box system. If the Apogee doesn't help I think I prefer the digico pre's in this hall.

Any thoughts?
Thanks!
Cameron

[Jim vanBergen]

Cameron,

The DiGiCo mic/line card has a d-sub jumper on the card to move from mic to line, though I always use base mic input and trim as desired, even when using line level inputs. So give it a shot- I'd adjust ONE card, take an input, Y it to two cards (one in mic, one in line) and listen. The converters are pretty decent and the path pristine, even at
48k.

If you just want the line level inputs, you power down, slip the card out, and the d-sub on the front of the card near the inputs is on the TOP connection for mic, and BOTTOM for line.

Hope this helps- please let us know your results!

JvB

[roonsbane]

Thanks Jim for the info,

That is a great idea to Y the signal although I think I will hear immediately if the strident quality specifically in the Violins on the left side of the orchestra relaxes. I don't hear it in the right side of the orchestra so much. At least it doesn't bother me as much. Obviously, I am splitting hairs here and most people won't even hear the difference. It's noteworthy that I did not have the grace at the beginning of season and everyone have been absolutely raving about the recording I did during this period of Berlioz: L'enfance Du Christ that went on the MPR Web site at Christmas. The digico pre's seem to compliment the strings in this particular room better. This was a big surprise. I have been working ever since to make the grace pre's sound like the diigico pre's and this seems like a waste of time. We could certainly use the grace in our remote cabinet to compliment our Great Rivers.

I will look for that Dsub jumper. It seems like taking some of the extra junk circuitry out of the circuit is definitely the first thing to try.
Cameron