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Subject: Re: MOTM-940: Ignorant About Signal Grounding

From: "sydilaxe" <sydilaxe@...>
Date: 2002-11-25

>
> I've got a dumb question about the 940 Patch Panel. This is used to
> interface the MOTM with a banana-jack machine, such as a Serge.
>
> Now... _how does it do that?_ Naïve question, but seriously, how does the=

> grounding work? I see that for every ¼" jack, there's a "hot" and ground
> banana, and the grounds are tied together, but where do they "go" on the
> Serge? Do you alligator clip a single ground line from the '940 to the fr=
ont
> panels of the Serge or something?

Typically, many banana-based manufacturers offer a ground on the power
supply (Serge does this). Grounding to the chassis would also work.
However, your begin running the risk of ground loops the more you do this, =

especially when grounding multiple banana based modulars together.

> It's funny that I've never thought about this before. I got mine for doin=
g
> DIY stuff... you know, converting the ¼" TO TEST LEADS. But how do you
use
> it in the "real world."? In fact, assuming you had a Serge, Modcan, or
> whatever, how do you actually get audio out of those things and into a
> mixing board?

Many output modules offer 1/4 outputs in addition to banana jacks. However=
,
you can also fabricate a 1/4 to banana cable and ground your system to the =

mixing board.

My question about the design of the 940 is why there are 8 banana ground
jacks on it? Wouldn't there only need to be one ground post that you woul=
d
connect your banana systems to? Is there a benefit to grounding separate
systems to each of the individual ground jacks? Maybe Paul could answer
this one...