[sdiy] Banana vs. 1/4" question

[Czech Martin]

preliminary note:
this is not to start another banana/xlr/telephone connection
war, nor to bash people who have banana wiring synths.
Thank you for your attention.

--------------------------------------------------------------

For the practical use it is a question of habit.
Depends on the individual.

I *think* that feeding one output to multiple inputs is
a rare situation compared to one output feeding only one
input. This may also depend on what people usually do, habits.
It also depends on the level of modularisation.
E.g. is a tri to sine converter inside a vco, or is
it an external module?
I could be terribly wrong here.

De gustibus non (est)disputandum.
About questions of taste you should not dispute, it will
lead to nowhere.

The only question that can be really decided in some sense
is that of interference.
Just for fun I'm planning an experiment on that:

Two modules, packet in metal boxes. Equipped with
banana and telephone jacks, the later unbalanced and (cheap) balanced.
A worst case length of cable of all sorts (perhaps 2m?).
The modules should be 2m away from each other (large system).
Their grounds will meet on one star point.

I'm not sure what will be inside the modules, I thought about a Wien
sine generator, and some digital stuff in the other (counter?).
Perhaps I should consider some noisy circuit together with a low
signal level circuit in one module. What about an 3080 OTA VCA?
I have still to think about the worst case.

I would very much appreachiate your suggestions to that question
on how a real worst case setup could be made, without overkill.

The outputs of that all will get into a proven noiseless
adapter (to balanced audio, perhaps unbalanced) and then to the Soundscape HDR
(which is virtually noiseless for this purpose, it also has no
aliasing problem due to massive oversampling, I've tested that).
As I said, I have all sorts of interference (FM-Radio, computer,
monitor, railway, 50 Hz of course).

Then one can make comparisons of S/N and draw up some nice interference
spectra (well, limited to 24kHz).


As a practical requirement one should be able to feed 16bit (real 16bit!)
audio into the modular system, process it, and feed it back into the
16bit system without too much signal degradation: unwanted nonlinear
distortion (sometimes we want some), hissing noise (Johnson, junction)
and picked up RF and low frequency interference.

I hope I will find some time arround easter to start this, the components
are allready sitting on my workbench!


m.c.





-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Begin [mailto:trypannon at hotmail.com]
Sent: Dienstag, 15. April 2003 22:48
To: synth
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Banana vs. 1/4" question


I'm sort of having the same problem, i.e. going crazy trying to choose what
to go with, I keep dreading one day having hundreds of 1/4" jacks and then
realizing I should have gone with banana, or vice versa.
I'd love to see a poll of jack preferences of people on this list...or maybe
jack preferences vs years experience.
This may be a stupid question, but it's hard for me to tell sometimes.
Can't you just throw together some y-splitter 1/4" patch cords for if you
ever feel like splitting a voltage?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Schulze" <michael.schulze at oberlin.edu>
To: <synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl>
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2003 12:02 PM
Subject: [sdiy] Banana vs. 1/4" question


>
> A while back we had a thread about the ideal modular synth connector.  I'v
> just finished my first module - a quad vco with 36 1/4" jacks.  As I gaze
> longingly at the Milton sequencer I remember how cool it was on the big
> Buchla system in college to be able to split control voltages by just
> sticking a banana into another banana already plugged it.  Very conducive
to
> improvisation and patching on the fly.
>
> As I remember the thread the only real disadvantage to bananas was that
they
> could not be normalled and you needed to adapt signals from the outside
> world.  I don't care about these points - were there any other
disadvantages
> I am forgetting?
>
> I am actually considering redoing all 36 of these jacks to end up with an
> all-banana modular.
>
>