Banana jacks and impedance

[Harry Bissell]

(spoken in the voice of the Wizard of Oz...)

Impedance.... you don't want impedance... Any fool can have impedance...
No... What you want is

Adequate signal levels.... If you are running +-10V signal levels (oscillators
etc...) you
can forget about impedance. It won't matter. The signal will clobber the
noise...

If you are running low levels (like line level... 500mV or less) you have a
"problem here Houston..."  Even low impedance lines will pick up noise... noise
clobbers signal here...

If you can wrap your hand around the unshielded cable (don't ground your
body...) and you can't hear the hum pickup... then banannas are probably OK.

oh yeah... IMHO.

ps. I don't use bannana for that reason...

:^) Harry

Jim Johnson wrote:

> I'm in the process of wiring an effects and mixing rack to go with my
> Fenix/Serge modular, and I keep flip-flopping on how to do it. First I was
> going to bring out all of the connections on the back of the mixer and the
> effects to banana jacks; then I realized that this would be a bitch, so I
> decided to go with standard 1/4" patch bays and lots of cables. Just about
> the time I realized what this would cost, I came across a pair of blank
> Trompeter patch panels on Ebay for $10.. so now I'm thinking of going with
> banana again.
>
> The real question I have is, what sort of input impedances must my gear
> have in order to work well with banana jacks? Maybe this is a bad question,
> since I don't have any of the manuals for my effects and mixer other than
> one, whose input impedance is about 47K. All of the effects units (Boss)
> have -10dBm inputs; the mixer (Roland) has -20dBm inputs.
>
> I figure I can keep the banana cord lengths fairly short within the effects
> rack, though I may need to use my longer cables (3 feet) to bridge the gap
> between the two cabinets. Fortunately, I have never had any noise problems
> even when using the 3-footers withing the Fenix/Serge combo.
>
> Any thoughts on this mess?
>
> Happy new year!
> Jim Johnson
> Metaphoric Software
> -------------------
> Makers of Techno Toys
> Software for Electronic Music
> http://www.technotoys.com
> info at technotoys.com