Hot levels for your MOTM
1999-12-15 by David Bivins
Hi all, I was talking to another list member about getting good levels into his MOTM gear from wimpier sources (synths, etc.), and thought I'd share with all. I send stuff out of my mixer through an aux send into the MOTM. On a Mackie mixer (at least the VLZ series, pre-Pro), the overall output possible from an aux send is +22dBU. In practice, this means that it's plenty hot to send into the MOTM *in my experience.* I'm sure other mixers are similar. Mackies are really dependable and built like tanks, and I don't think you can buy as good of a mixer at that price point. But it's not the solution to world hunger, I'm sure ;) (I just don't want people new to mixers to think that Mackie is *the* choice for working with MOTM 'cause that's not true). I think the channel aux send gives you 10dBU of gain, while the master aux send (there's one for aux 1, another for aux two) adds 15dBU of gain at maximum; the output doesn't put out the sum, though; it's maxed at the aforementioned 22dBU. O.k. Now that I've been talking out of my butt about this, I have a question I should have answered for myself several years ago: How do dBU (I don't know if I even have the capitalization correct) relate to voltages? In other words, the MOTM is looking for (in most cases) 10V peak-to-peak, but what does that translate to in terms of what I was just describing with the Mackie? Is this apples and oranges? Can someone write up a definition for me? Please? I think I'm sooooo smart then I run into something like this... :) Thanks all, David.