Topic: What would cure DA-P1 overload

[limered]

Hi there,
             I'm taping fairly close up - band sessions - its quite a loud electric band (especially the guitar) - I am running line in to the DA-P1 from a (not great quality) preamp (M-Audio), to supply the phantom power - the limiter is on - i have the DA-P1 levels at about 7 - the volumes on the Preamp, very low - and the meters on the DA-P1 are showing 4 or 5 dB under. but I'm getting that static type saturated noise when the louder instruments come in. what could i do to cure this?
               
                 
 

[eric.B]

Hi there,
             I'm taping fairly close up - band sessions - its quite a loud electric band (especially the guitar) - I am running line in to the DA-P1 from a (not great quality) preamp (M-Audio), to supply the phantom power - the limiter is on - i have the DA-P1 levels at about 7 - the volumes on the Preamp, very low - and the meters on the DA-P1 are showing 4 or 5 dB under. but I'm getting that static type saturated noise when the louder instruments come in. what could i do to cure this?

on first guess, Id say your preamp is overloading..  You can try the pad on the dap1 or on the mics(if they have one).. If this fails, try a different location for the mics..   If that fails, get a better preamp.

of course.. it could be the mics (what kind are you using?)..  or the cables are bad..   could be a buncha things..  what are you playing back on?

[limered]

thanks for your input. I am using AT4033's (pad on) - and i realised that i must mention I'm going in XLR but with line in selected - so it maybe that i need to go RCA in. I just read somewhere that it references at +4dB if you go XLR, and select line.
  what pre would be worth looking at?
 

[F.O.Bean]

http://www.hosatech.com/hosa/products/ATT-448.html

[grider]

Hi there,
             I'm taping fairly close up - band sessions - its quite a loud electric band (especially the guitar) - I am running line in to the DA-P1 from a (not great quality) preamp (M-Audio), to supply the phantom power - the limiter is on - i have the DA-P1 levels at about 7 - the volumes on the Preamp, very low - and the meters on the DA-P1 are showing 4 or 5 dB under. but I'm getting that static type saturated noise when the louder instruments come in. what could i do to cure this?
               
                 
 

you have your mic in/line in setting wrong; I have done this myself and the recording sounded bizarre, and similar to the way you describe yours; sounds like you have it set to "mic in" when in fact it should be set to "line in", try recording something from your stereo speakers at home and see if you can change the settings on the DAP1 to resolve the problem

[limered]

 no I had the setting on line- in,  this won't work if you want the phantom power supplied from the DA-P1 - i use a not great pre-amp with phantom - so for some reason i can plug into the XLRs on the DA-P1 from the preamp and select line-in - i know i have done this in the past since it would blast your ears out if it was set to mic in.
  looks like it is inline attenuators that are the answer here.

[Todd R]

Make sure you are using the -20db attenuator onboard the DA-P1 when going mic in.  I'd try this without the outboard pre and without using external attenutors first.  The P1 has a pretty decent mic preamp, so it might be just as good or better than the M-Audio one.  The P1 preamp can distort at very high sound pressure levels, but you should first try it with the -20db pad engaged and see what happens.  The -20db attenuator circuit itself will not cause any undue noise or static, but the P1 might still overload with the -20db pad engaged depending on how loud your source is.

Also, since this topic is spread over 2 threads, I'll answer another issue here:  If you decide to use line transformers, you will need to use an external phantom power supply, since the phantom power with the P1 will not work with the line transformers.  Also, the line transformers will take a balanced XLR signal and output an unbabalanced signal, so you will need to connect them to the RCA line inputs of the P1.

[limered]

the line transformers will take a balanced XLR signal and output an unbabalanced signal, so you will need to connect them to the RCA line inputs of the P1.

thanks Todd, I think this is exactly what i need to do. it is a loud band I'm recording so even with -20dB pad on, there will be overload - unless I turn down the record levels severely, which in the case of the DA-P1 gives alot less S/N - (its attenuative),so the signal won't nearly be the best it could be.