a di box or direct box is a device that converts a high impedance instrument level signal to a low impedance microphone level signal and also balances the signal in the process a di box is one of the most useful tools you can have both for live sound and in the studio let's take a look at when and how to use a direct box and along the way we'll listen to some audio examples so that you can decide if you really need one one of the most common ways to use a di box is to connect a bass guitar or electric guitar to a microphone input why would you want to do that well there are a few reasons maybe you want to preserve a direct signal that isn't affected by the instrument's amplifier so that you can re-amp it or pass it through an amplifier plug-in later on or perhaps you just want a clean signal that isn't susceptible to leakage from nearby instruments there are however a few problems with connecting an instrument directly into a microphone input first of all the pickups on the bass guitar or electric guitar output a high impedance instrument level signal while the microphone input on your mixer is designed for a low impedance microphone level signal this is where a di box comes in the di box is essentially a transformer that will convert the high impedance instrument level signal coming from the instrument into a low impedance microphone level signal most di boxes have an xlr output and a quarter inch through output that way you've got a low impedance mic level signal that goes to your mic input and a high impedance instrument level signal that goes to your amp like normal but how big of a difference does this actually make what'll happen if you connect an instrument without a di box many audio interfaces have instrument inputs built in for example my focusrite scarlet 2i2 has an instrument switch right here on the front that toggles the input impedance would using a di box make a difference if the interface already has an instrument input well let's set up a test i'll connect a guitar to the input of this radial pro di passive direct box and connect the output of the di box to input 1 on the interface then i'll connect the guitar directly to input 2 on the interface and set that input to instrument mode once i've made a recording of each setup we'll be able to compare them side by side [Music] [Music] as you can hear there's only a very subtle difference the di into the microphone input and the guitar into the instrument input are slightly different but both totally usable [Music] [Applause] [Music] if your mixer or audio interface doesn't have an instrument input you'll run into some bigger problems let's change input 2 to line which will change it back to a low impedance input we'll also need more gain because the input is expecting a line level now instead of an instrument level [Music] here you'll notice that there's a pretty significant roll off of the high mid and high frequencies although the difference is a bit more noticeable when the signal is saturated by an amp modeling plug-in so this means that you should definitely use a di box if your mixer or your interface doesn't have a dedicated instrument input a di box has another benefit aside from proper impedance matching it also balances the unbalanced signal coming from the guitar i made a full video about balanced connections and how they work if you want to learn more but the important thing to know here is that the balance signal can travel much further than an unbalanced signal without picking up too much noise so let's imagine you want a direct signal from an instrument on stage at a concert or an instrument in the tracking room at a studio if you try to run the instrument cable longer than about 20 feet it'll start to pick up a lot of noise along the way using a di box you can keep the unbalanced connections short from the instrument to the di and from the di to the amp while running the balanced output of the di the long distance to the mixer input let's set up another test to listen to how big of a difference this makes now for good reason it's kind of hard to find an instrument cable that's longer than about 20 feet so i've strung together a few 15-foot instrument cables with these couplers we're going to run the same test as before but this time i'll use a long xlr cable between the di box and input 1 on the audio interface and i'll use a long chain of instrument cables from the guitar to input 2 on the audio interface this time i'm going to keep the instrument button engaged on input 2. [Music] as you can hear in addition to the rolled off high frequencies there's also considerably more noise in the unbalanced signal than in the balance signal which is even more distracting when the signal is passed through an amplifier plug-in [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this feature of a di box can be helpful for just about any signal source that needs to travel over a long distance if you need to send a signal from a keyboard a smartphone a laptop a tv or anything else with an unbalanced output a di box is an easy way to balance the signal another advantage of a passive di box is that there's no direct connection between the input and output which means that a direct box can eliminate buzz and hum caused by ground loops so if you're hearing a buzz you might try putting direct boxes in the audio connections between the various devices this is just one difference between an active and passive di to learn more watch the video that's on your screen now i'll see you there

greetings all Bernoulli's here with glb productions thanks for joining us for this video this is part three of our di box series in part one as you remember we learned what a DI box does and when you need one in part two we learned about the difference between active and passive di boxes in this video we're going to look at amplifier D eyes what do they do how do I use one what are the advantages and disadvantages of amplifier D eyes compared to normal di boxes and do I still need an external di box now in front of you on the table you can see a couple of amplifiers the amplifier on the left is a Vox AJ 70 it's one of their acoustic guitar amplifiers and the amplifier on the right is a hot K a 25 base amplifier neither of these is a large or expensive amplifier however technology has advanced to the point that many amplifiers even entry-level amplifiers are coming equipped with DI outs as you can see on the back of both of these amplifiers you have an XLR output on the Vox it is called a DI out on the hot K it is labeled direct out they are also called balanced out or in certain cases balanced line out so let's begin by answering the question what do these amplify the eyes do they are essentially a DI box which is built into the back of an amplifier in other words they perform the dual function of line balancing and impedance matching converting the high impedance unbalanced output of a guitar bass or keyboard into a balanced low impedance signal that can be run long distances without suffering from degradation due - hum or buzz secondly they allow the direct connection of your instrument to a mixing console or professional recorder without the use of a microphone so the second question we're going to address today is how do I use one of these amplifier D is how do I connect it to my mixing console the first thing is you will need an ordinary microphone cable and you would connect the female end of your microphone cable to the XLR output on your amplifier it is best to do this with the equipment power down at the very least make sure that the gain on your mixing console is down all the way or the channel is muted before you do this it's also a very good idea to make sure you switch phantom power on that channel off the amplifier di does not need phantom power and in the case of certain older designs phantom power can actually harm the output in order to find out if yours is one of these consult with the manufacturer the second step is to take the male end of the microphone cable and connect it to an XLR input on your mixing console now on certain mixing consoles you will find that running directly into the XLR or microphone input will actually overload the preamp and the reason is that some amplifier outputs a very hot very high-end level and even with the gain all the way down you will find that you still have too much signal if you find this to be the case I recommend using one of these adapters this is referred to as an XLR to TRS or tip ring sleeve adapter and all it does is it converts the XLR connector to a balanced quarter-inch connector so you retain the balance line level signal you just have a different connector what this does is it clips on to the front of your mic connector excuse me the front of your XLR connector and it allows you to run directly into the quarter-inch line level on your mixing console this will often result in a better sound simply because you are bypassing the microphone preamp which in certain mixers has a certain color to it I'll demonstrate both of these setups just so that you can see the difference in level now the next step in our process is to connect your instrument to the amplifier once again make sure that you keep the mixer channel turned all the way down during this process it's simply to avoid transients in other words loud bangs and pops going through the PA system so I'm going to connect as those of you who are familiar with the AJ 70 will know that it has a Tube channel and a normal or clean channel I'm going to connect my Takamine tsf 48 to that channel so make sure that my master is turned down and plug in to my guitar this the tsf 48 just in case you're wondering so plug in there I just wait for the to preempt warm up the settings I'm going to use on my guitar I'm going to leave the EQ set completely flat and the cooltube knob turned completely off now that you've completed the connection of guitar or whatever the instrument is to your amplifier the next step is to get sound from your amplifier the reason for this is that some amplifier the eyes are positioned after the master volume so if there's no sound coming out of the amplifier there will be no sound going to the DI so as you can see here on the Aga 70 the channel that's closer to the camera is the normal or non Tube channel and I've connected my guitar to that my volume on the channel set to about 10 o'clock my EQ is completely flat my color is positioned at 12 o'clock my reverb is all the way down and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to play my guitar and raise the master volume okay so now we have sound coming out of the amplifier as you can see the clip light on the channel came on so I decided to just back my channel volume down a little bit and raise my master volume to compensate alright will now turn our attention to the mixer itself as you can see we are connected to channel 3 on my Mackie 1202 VLC Pro and what I'm going to do is I'm going to perform the gain setting procedure on the mixer itself so on the channel that I'm plugged into I press my solo or pfl button as you can see the root solo light flashes to tell me I'm in gain setting mode and I'll now play my guitar and raise the gain or trim level it's usually safest to start with this around 10 o'clock in case you have excessive level now as you can see there even with the game fairly low I'm already over the optimum level setting so I'm going to back my game down to about nine o'clock it's important to get a realistic idea of how loud your instruments going to be during performance so I normally try and get the player to play some loud chords again was still a little bit loud there back down all right so you can see that running directly into the XLR or microphone input we need a relatively low gain setting otherwise we risk overloading the input to the mixer let me now show you how this sounds if I connect to the line input using my adapter so I'm going to release my solo switch them and connect my adapter in line remember all this does is it simply converts the connected type plug back in press solo my route solo light flashes let's see what our level is now as you can see now level is now a lot more manageable so let's raise our game so running into the line level you can see that we have a much more normal gain in other words somewhere around 11 o'clock which is what you would expect for line level sources so bear this in mind especially if you have a mixing console which tends to distort easily and especially if you're finding that your game is all the way down but you're still having trouble getting your level around zero when you're setting gain so then we have a summary of how to set up amplifier D is as you can see it's a very straightforward process all you do is you connect the XLR output on the amplifier to the XLR or line level input on your mixer make sure that there's sound coming out of your amplifier and then perform the gain setting procedure on your mixing console whether you run into the microphone or line input will depend on your mixer whether the mic input has a sufficient gain range to handle the signal that's coming from the amplifier and also what sounds better next let's have a look at the advantages and disadvantages of amplifier D is compared to a standalone di box ball they save you money because they're built into the amplifier you already have a DI available and you don't need to spend money on an additional di box this can mean a significant amount of savings in many cases you can actually buy an entire amplifier for the cost of a high-quality external di box the second thing is that they simplify setup as you can see setup is extremely simple and straightforward all you need is a single XLR or microphone cable in order to run an external di box you would need the DI box itself and an additional instrument cable to connect the through connector of the DI box to the amplifier itself so they not only save you Vence they also save you time and complexity during setup more cables inevitably means more things that can go wrong more things to transport more things to look after and stop being pinched at the gate so there are advantages compared to an external di box now let's discuss the disadvantages of amplifier D is the first disadvantage as we can see is that they can sometimes overload the inputs of certain mixing consoles this is especially true of many cheaper or entry-level mixing consoles a good example being the yamaha mg series with those if I were to connect this di even with the gain turned all the way down I would still have issues with overloading and hence issues with Distortion now in certain cases you can work around this issue as you can see by using an XLR to TRS adapter and running into the line level of the mixing console unfortunately in the real world this is often either not possible because of reasons of time or because the technician who you're working with doesn't know the difference between a line level input and a mic level input all he knows is is that he's getting Distortion and he's unable to deal with this really hot signal that you're sending him so if you operate in a real world situation it's often best to carry an external DI box just for these contingencies the second disadvantage of amplify ID is is that because they are often added as an afterthought they can in many cases be much worse sounding than good-quality external di boxes now in order to show you this I'm going to do two comparisons I'm going to first play my tsf 48c through my mixer using the amplifier di I will then connect to my radio JDI and let you hear how that sounds just to let you know I'm running directly into my mixing console as you can see here the gain is set to 10 o'clock channel EQ is set flat and the output of the mixer is connected directly to the video camera I and now let's do the same demonstration using the hot ka 25 as you can see that the direct aisle is connected directly to the XLR input on channel 3 of my mixer it's interesting that the direct out on this amplifier runs at a much lower level than that on the Vox AGA 70 it's much closer to microphone level and therefore you can see that my gain on the mixer is set quite a bit higher it's set at about 230 nearly 3 o'clock this is in order to get correct gain structure throughout the system so that's our demonstration of the amplified the eyes versus the standalone the eyes could you hear much of a difference in my opinion when comparing the Vox amplifier di to the radial JDI I found the sound from the JDI to be a little bit warmer and a little bit rounder than the sound from the amplifier di both were very usable neither one was noisy or unduly harsh or sharp when it comes to the hot ka 25 di versus the BSS di I found the sound from the BSS di to be more detailed and having more in the way of high frequencies then the director on the heart ka 25 again both signals were perfectly usable although I think I prefer the signal from the BSS di box a little bit more so there you can see the differences between amplifier the eyes and external stand alone di boxes very often the quality that you get from a built in DI in an amplifier is perfectly adequate and perfect reusable especially for live sound we're very often the determining factor in the quality of sound perceived by the audience is the loudspeakers in the system rather than the inputs to the system itself however when it comes to recording you may wish to choose an external di box just to give you that little bit extra bit of quality that will make your recording shine and the tracking process to be that much smoother and easier a final disadvantage of amplifier D is is the feature set that you get very often on inexpensive or low cost amplifiers all you'll get is a single XLR output if you compare that to the features that are available on the JDI you can see that the JDI has a number of things that could be very helpful in solving problems in a sound reinforcement situation to begin with you have a polarity reverse switch this can be often useful in dealing with acoustic instruments that insist on feeding back this is because you as the player are standing and what is called a room mode a place in the room which is particularly resonant at a certain frequency and hence your guitars feeding back at that frequency very often flipping the polarity can completely solve this problem or at least help to alleviate it to the point where the gate can happen no such feature is available on the a 25 or on the AGA 70 for that matter secondly on the JDI you have a ground lift switch this will enable you often to deal with ground loops cases where your stage equipment is on one main circuit and your mixing console is on another if there is a difference in ground potential between these two circuits it will show up as hum or buzz very often lifting the ground at the DI will break the ground connection between these two circuits and stop the ground loop no such feature is available on either of the amplify ID is that we are looking at today now to conclude this video I'd like to mention a little bit about block diagrams it's very important as a sound engineer that you be aware of where in the signal chain your di signal is coming from this is especially true with amplifier D is because you don't know if the signal that you are getting is pre or post EQ and whether it is pre or post master volume so let's have a look at the block diagram for the Vox AGA 70 now as you know the Vox AGA 70 has two channels it has a solid-state Channel and as you can see here it has a tube preamp what is also very interesting is that both the DI and tuna out are located before this tube in the signal chain what that means is that you will not get any of the coloration from the tube preamp in your signal so some people may buy this amplifier thinking that oh great I have a tube di box unfortunately that's not the case the second thing to note is that in this case the DI out is pre all of your EQ controls as well as pre your anti feedback and master controls so what this means is that all of the changes that you make to your tone controls will not be reflected in the direct output this is often the preferred setup for sound engineers because it means that whatever changes the player makes to their EQ on stage will not be affected or rather will not affect your front-of-house and this is good in the sense that you don't want the tone of the guitar to be changing halfway through the gig however for musicians it means that you cannot affect the DI out with your onboard EQ and horn controls so if you are purchasing this hoping that you'll get a complete recording solution where you can make changes on the amplifier and then be and they will be reflected in the DI out unfortunately that's not the case so being able to read a block diagram and to interpret where your signal is in the signal chain is an important skill both for the sound engineer as well as the working musician now if we have a look at the hot K amplifier manual as you can see here this is the a-series combo owner's manual you will notice that at the back there is a specifications page but there is no block diagram and this is something which I feel manufacturers should really address because having a block diagram is very useful in terms of determining where your signal is actually coming from so if you don't have a block diagram then you will need to consult the section of the manual that discusses the direct out in this particular manual that is located on page six and as you can see here under the direct out signal it says the standard balanced XLR connector provides a line level pre EQ and pre volume output signal so once again the EQ changes that you make on the amplifier are not reflected in the direct out signal the other thing is that it says it is line level but in my experience it is actually more like a mic level signal meaning that you need a gain of about two to three o'clock on most mixes to make this happen so if you roll up to a gig and you tell the sound engineer yeah my di is line level out and he sets his gain accordingly he may get nothing or next to nothing and think that there's something wrong with your amplifier so always test your gear before you bring it out and use it in the real world so that's all we have for this video I hope it's been helpful for you if you have any questions or comments do please get in touch either in the comment section below through a private message on youtube or on my Facebook page GLB productions until the next video this is bruno loose with glb productions thanks for watching and take care

greetings all bruno loose here with GLB productions in this video we're going to discuss what does the DI box do and when do I need one on the table in front of you you can see two di boxes on the left previously reviewed you have the BSS audio a r133 considered by many to be the industry standard for active di boxes and on the right you have the jensen transformer equipped radial JDI direct box considered by many one of the best passive direct boxes that money can buy so first of all let's look at the term di where does this come from and what does it mean the term di box comes from the phrase direct insertion or direct injection and it refers to the process of capturing a signal without the use of a microphone this has many advantages first of all you do not pass the signal through the air so it does not suffer from signal degradation while being transferred you don't have background noise you don't have external interferences within your sound that might cause you problems later or be difficult to remove if you don't want them so that's what di box means direct insertion or direct injection box secondly what does a di do di actually has three functions which we will look at one after another connector matching impedance matching and signal balancing so let's begin with connector matching most of you who play guitar or keyboards know that your instrument outputs on what we call a jack connector in other words you take a typical guitar cable which has plugs like this on the end and you connect them to your guitar if you try and plug your guitar directly into a PA system you will immediately discover that these are not compatible with the XLR connectors that are commonly found on mixers as well as on the wall at your venue so what the DI box does is it has jack connectors on one side where you plug in your guitar or keyboard and on the other side it has an XLR output so you would plug in a normal mic cable here and run that into your wall socket or into your sound reinforcement or recording console so that's the first thing that they do now the second thing that di boxes do is impedance matching impedance is essentially AC resistance resistance to the flow of electrical current now I'm sure we all remember our school physics experiment where we connected a battery to a light bulb current flow through the circuit and the light bulb glowed well an old fashioned incandescent light bulb is basically a resistor it's a coil of wire in a vacuum that when electrical current passes through it some of that current is converted into heat and eventually into light energy when you apply the concept of resistance to an alternating current such as that found in a musical instrument you have the concept of impedance now without getting overly technical it's important to understand that all instruments whether they be guitars or keyboards or Fender Rhodes pianos they have what is called an output impedance in other words it is the electrical resistance of the circuit that is outputting the signal from the instrument this can be either high or low typically instruments such as fender Stratocasters Fender Jazz and precision basses that do not have an onboard preamp in other words there's no battery in the instrument have a relatively high output impedance if you connect this output impedance directly to a mixing console or directly to a recorder you will typically experience high frequency loss and this high frequency loss is due to a miss match of the impedances so one of the things that a DI box does is it provides a relatively high input impedance so that you do not encounter this high frequency loss the radial JDI has an input impedance of one hundred and forty thousand ohms 140 kilo ohms the BSS AR one 33 has an input impedance of 1 million ohms or one mega ohm and this will ensure correct impedance matching between your instrument and the recording or sound reinforcement system so you do not experience this high frequency loss the third thing that a DI box does is signal balancing the difference between an unbalanced and a balanced signal is that an unbalanced signal consists of only two legs you have a hot and a ground a balanced signal consists of three legs you have a positive a negative and a common ground the difference in application between the two signals is that a balanced signal can be transmitted much longer distances without the risk of outside interference or signal degradation and unbalanced signal such as that derived from a passive guitar or bass can typically only be transmitted 5 meters of 15 feet before you run the risk of outside interference hum buzz and in extreme cases picking up local radio broadcasts from taxi companies and even the police force which is not something you want breaking in during your gig balance signals on the other hand can be transmitted many hundreds of meters without the risk of outside interference or signal loss and that is why you need a direct box it converts the high impedance unbalanced signal from your instrument into a low impedance balanced signal that can be transmitted a long distance without suffering from signal degradation now let's move on to the question when do I need a direct box the first situation already touched on is anytime you need to run an unbalanced signal more than five meters or 15 feet you need a direct box because you need to convert that unbalanced signal to a balanced signal in order to avoid the problems of hum and bus typical setup for a DI box would look something like this this diagram incidentally is contained in the excellent user guide that is supplied with the radial JDI direct box thank you Peter Janis and all the wonderful folks at radial you would take your instrument in this case the instrument depicted is an electric bass but it could equally be an acoustic guitar or a keyboard you plug that into the DI box you then have two separate outputs this which is your original signal is connected to your stage amplification in the typical manner this which is your balanced low impedance leg is connected to your sound reinforcement console or indeed to your recording setup this leg here needs to be kept short because typically it is still unbalanced so you would need to keep this under five meters or 15 feet this can be as long as is necessary runs of up to 600 meters are perfectly fine with no issues secondly you need a DI box anytime you are dealing with what are called ground loops now a ground loop manifests itself as a very very low hum or buzz in a PA system typically either 50 or 60 Hertz depending on the type of electricity you have in your local area the cause of a ground loop is unequal ground references within your sound reinforcement system once again the folks at radial have provided us an excellent diagram to illustrate this here you have a keyboard the keyboard is connected to your mixer via a signal cable the mixer is connected to a power point typically at the back of the venue or on one side and the keyboard is connected to a second power point typically on stage or near the front of the venue what most people don't realize is that there is actually a second path connecting the two pieces of equipment and this is the electrical system of the building itself now as you can see because of this connection you actually have a loop of cable now if the ground reference at this point is not the same as the ground reference at this point you have a potential difference and as we all know any potential difference also known as a voltage difference will cause a flow of current within this loop of wire and this manifests itself as a ground loop ground loops can be incredibly loud and they can prevent a show from taking place if they're really loud the function of a DI box in this case is to break the ground connection between the instrument and the sound reinforcement console and this is usually done through the use of an audio transformer now an audio transformer as many of you will know is an iron core with two coils of wire one on either side the key thing to understand about audio transformers is that there is no physical connection between the primary and the secondary coils of the transformer it is what is called a magnetic bridge because of this there is no longer a direct electrical connection here and thus the ground loop which previously was continuous and thus causing a hum is now broken and the system falls silent the best way to deal with this issue is with a DI box containing an audio transformer some people attempt to lift the AC or power ground on one of these components to try and do this this is extremely dangerous because if there is any fault with the system any electrical fault the ground becomes you the operator and this in the past has killed a number of musicians including some rather high-profile ones so that's the second function of the DI box to deal with ground loops so that's our video on what does the DI box do and when do I need to use one in a future video I'm going to be discussing the difference between active and passive di boxes what the correct application is for both types and how they differ in the way that they sound and the way that they interface with your equipment until then this is bruno loose for GLB productions thanks very much for watching see you again soon

hey guys this is Bryan at obedia and today I wanted to just bring you a little bit of information on something that can be kind of confusing in the world of live and studio music for some musicians and that is what does a direct box do direct boxes can be a little a little daunting at first when you first have someone tell you to buy a direct box you know I know the first time that I was told to get a direct box was when I was playing a live gig and I was told by the promoter of the event that I would need to di into the sound system and I didn't understand what that meant at all and basically here's the idea behind a direct box so I can hopefully clear this up for some of you guys because I know that when I first found out about him a while ago over 10 years ago you know it was a little hard to find some information some time so basically a direct box has two sections got an in and you can see the inputs right here of this direct box and it's also got a cut right here cut switch so it has a zero decibel cut I can quote by cut by negative 20 M by negative 40 decibels so I've got two inputs these are quarter inches these are what are called unbalanced there are two pins there's a hop pin and a ground pin and a two pin setup works pretty much you know this is what you have with most guitars and you know most instruments output quarter-inch when you come right down to it now the on the other side of a DI box we have a dun-da-da-da an output which is a 3 pin XLR output port and what this is this has a hop pin a cold pin and a ground pin now this is balanced so what this means is that an XLR cable and can essentially be many many many feet 30 40 feet things like that and the idea is that it will keep the line level noise which can be introduced with length of cable and also quality of electrics things like that will keep that line level noise down but that can be a hard thing for a two-pin cable to do as those cables get longer they can introduce noise they're not balanced and so they can introduce all kinds of audio gremlins that we don't really want so what a DI box does a direct box what this will do is allow us to send a quarter-inch unbalanced input to a converted balanced XLR output so we're going to just basically convert from unbalanced to balanced and then we get to send this out to our house sound system or anything else that we might be working with now a lot of times when you play a house sound system typically you're going to be running your audio into a snake of some kind that snake is usually going to have XLR cables that get plugged into it so let's say that you're a DJ or something like that and your audio interface only has quarter inches out you can use the DI box in order to send those quarter inches out as XLR outs and then they will also theoretically be balanced as long as your DI box is doing its job now again I spoke about line noise if you find that you have line noise a lot of di boxes have a ground lift and what this will do is depending on if you have let's say noise being introduced when you plug-in you can flip this switch and one of these settings will usually clear up the noise that you're going to have in the line because a ground loop will usually mean that the electricity is looping back and forth through whatever piece of gear it is that you're using and so when you hear a ground loop hum you're actually hearing the sound of the electricity but you don't want that running through a PA system or a recording so you want to try using the lift setting and when you do that you should hopefully be able to cut that noise out now you know di boxes have a lot of different purposes as I say great for bass guitars when you're recording in the studio sending your bass in in order to be able to send your bass guitar out as an XLR as a balanced output great for guitars and again as I say DJs and live electronic musicians these things are must-have so pick up a direct box or two it's always a good thing to have in your bag I like to keep a good few of them because you never know when you're going to need one of these guys I hope this has been some useful information to you guys as always please stay in touch with me my email address is brian at obedia comm get me on twitter and facebook my name is obedia tutor there twitter.com four slash obedient tutor and on facebook at slash obedia tutor thank you guys so much for watching happy music making and I'll see you next tutorial

what's up everyone Steven here with neuro DSP and today I want to talk about di boxes over the last few videos I've been getting a lot of questions about di boxes what do they do and are they necessary for my setup so I want to take a couple of minutes explain how they work how they can help your recordings and whether you actually need them or not so let's go ahead and jump into it number one interference if you're recording in an environment that has a lot of radiofrequency interference or an old building with bad electricity then this might be interfering with your signal so what a DI box does to combat this is it takes your high impedance unbalanced signal down to a low impedance balanced signal so then it sends a signal through a microphone cable which is far less susceptible to interference than instrument cables the last interference problem at DI box fixes is ground loops should there be a problem in the electricity in your building a DI box will stop a ground loop from starting and generating a 50 or 60 cycle hum note however that if you have noisy pickups the DI box will not fix this issue because microphone cables only keep additional interference from getting to the signal as it's passing through aside from breaking ground loops the DI box does not take any noise out of the signal that is being fed directly from the source number two impedance okay so we're gonna get a little bit into the weeds with this one but I feel like this is an important point to mention so in the last point I briefly mentioned high impedance and low impedance and what I want to take a second to do is explain what it is but more importantly what you should be looking for in the specs of your interfaces in DI boxes so what is electrical impedance electrical impedance is the measure of the opposition that a circuit presents a current when voltage is applied for the best sound quality and voltage transfer the input impedance of the connector you're plugging into like your interface should be at roughly seven to ten times higher than the output impedance of your source like your guitar the output impedance of a typical electric guitar pickup is roughly twenty to forty thousand ohms so the ideal input impedance of your guitar amp your DI box or your interface should be roughly seven to ten times that which is about two hundred and eighty thousand to four hundred thousand ohms so basically if you connect a low impedance source with a high impedance load you won't any distortion or frequency response change because of this connection but on the other hand if you have a high impedance source going to a low impedance load you will have distortion or frequency response change now this is something to check on your manufacturing specs on your interface nowadays most interfaces have instrument level inputs as well as mic level inputs so when we look at something as simple as the scarlett 2i2 the input impedance of the instrument input the quarter-inch jack is rated at 1.5 million ohms so that more than takes care of this issue but say that your interface or your mixer only has mic level inputs you will have to get a DI to make that transition number 3 reamping now this point actually ties into my first point when you're reacting you want the cleanest sound possible to send to your amplifier so if you have a ground loop issue and you have a 50 or 60 cycle hum in your signal you don't want to send that to your amp while you're recording so a possible scenario is recording in your own environment and then taking your D eyes to a professional studio with clean electricity to reamp later on number for editing live amp recordings when you record with live amps it can be very very difficult to edit just the live amp tracks the reason being is that the transient and high distortion tones is almost visually indistinguishable so I shot a video a few weeks ago of me recording the archetype cleaning through my own cabinet if you take a look at the recorded tracks I would have had to spend a lot of time just by ear editing if I only had the recorded amp tracks available however I knew that I would need to edit the takes afterwards so I recorded the DI along with it so I'd have a visual reference okay so that was a lot of information and I really appreciate you guys sticking out with me so now comes the big question is a DI box necessary for my setup if you're recording at home you're making demos you're making music you're only gonna personally distribute you're not planning on reamping later so you're just playing in the box probably not ultimately I'm finding more and more people are just plugging directly into their input on their interface and that gets great quality tones so if you don't need the reamping later on then don't worry about it however if you're looking to reamp later on you looking to break a ground loop or you look at a send this cleanest signal possible to a mix engineer so that way they can react later on then yes it's worth the investment so hopefully this explains why you would possibly want to invest in di box or not and I really appreciate you taking a look at the video please like share and subscribe hit the bell icon for notifications comment down below and let me know what you think of this content if you want to see more like it as always I'll see you in the next video

hey everybody got an interesting one for you here today this one comes from a viewer named Methuselah Hope who asks this question hey Glen would you ever consider doing a video explaining to people all the reasons a studio including home studios have a DI box I'm on the jst forum on Facebook and holyfuck trying to explain to people that a less than $300 investment is a good idea is getting [ __ ] old [ __ ] petty pictures that my friend is a fantastic idea let's have a look shall we [Music] okay since you're referencing the GST form I'm going to make the assumption that most of the people in there are recording at home using a VST amp sim of one kind or another and that's totally fine I imagine that's how most people are recording these days on a laptop or home computer with a one or two channel interface and playing their heart set so why drop money on a direct box why not just use the direct input on an interface okay now I'll be the first to admit I've just taken it for granted that a dedicated direct box has always been the best solution but after having my eyes opened regarding mic preamps and metal guitar the more expensive options might not be the best options check out my greatest metal guitarists reveal who I cook up a heaviest [ __ ] tone using a lowly a Behringer two channel mixer that I paid $50 for serves me right for spending too much time reading posts on gear slots and not enough time listening with my ears now bear in mind if you're recording more than just a software Empson and you're gonna record real amps and mic those up a dedicated direct fox is an absolute must mainly because it allows you to split the guitars signal one goes to the amp the other goes to the direct output and this gives you options later on remember the direct output goes into a microphone preamp so the signal takes on the character of that preamp but having that direct signal is a wonderful insurance policy especially if you're running a studio for paying clients if you don't get the tone right during tracking having a high-quality direct track will definitely save your ass because you can run that signal through an Epsom or run it back through another amp configuration via a ramp box my number one pick for a direct box is the countryman type 85 which costs a grand total of a hundred and seventy nine dollars another great choice is the radial j48 which is $199 both of these are built with extremely solid construction and will probably last you for life it will definitely outlast your interface I've had this j48 for about 14 years and I've gone through several interfaces in that time but this j48 still works flawlessly the countryman also has a little talk to bonus feature there's a selector switch for pickup and speaker this allows you to run your amps speaker output directly into your recorder as well as send it to your cabinet why is this useful well if you want to record a real amp but use an impulse response instead of making out the cabinet you can use this method without having a dedicated load box bear in mind you'll still have to have a cabinet hooked up so your amp sees the proper load and it won't be a silent recording setup but it will get the job done it's a nice feature that I've used on numerous occasions when it comes to recording a guitar signal directly off the pickups one would assume that the difference between an interface in the direct box would be slight at least with modern interfaces I know there's a serious issue with the first-generation focusrite scarlett series where the DI was simply too hot of a signal and would clip no matter how far the gain was turned down on a second generation system like the one I have it's no longer an issue there's plenty of headroom there's also some debate as to whether an active direct bucks is better for different types of pickups versus a passive one honestly I've never really been able to tell most modern active direct boxes like the countryman and radial can handle anything you can throw at them the original passive direct box is used to mess with a guitar signal especially on low output passive pickups and the players could definitely tell something was wrong these days not so much so I'm gonna run a simple test here play the same clip on several sources to dedicated direct boxes plus a pair of direct inputs on two different audio interfaces you tell me which sounds best we're going to run these all into the same amp sim with the same settings [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so could you hear a difference what did you like best leave a comment below or answer the poll question and I'll follow up in a few days and let you know which clip with which piece of gear in the meantime if you found this video to be helpful please hit the subscribe button thanks for watching and I'll be back tomorrow morning with SMG viewers comments and answering your best feedback of the week see you then hey guys if you liked the video be sure to subscribe as I post every Wednesday Friday and Sunday if you want to learn more about recording check out one of my tutorials or one of my gear reviews if you want the actual honest truth about a piece of equipment til next time stay metal my friends

should i get a passive di an active di a piezo di or one of these super huge expensive dis i'm jayla and jay and today i'm gonna try to demystify what's going on with these little boxes and try to figure out what's the best di for you [Music] so i have a four di boxes from the team down at radial engineering in canada beautiful british columbia which is like right where i live and at its heart all di boxes they all kind of really do the same thing so if you're in the market for a di box it's kind of like hard to figure out which the right one for you and you know there's typical like general rule of thumbs but really why do those rules exist and what's exactly going on there uh what i'm going to do today is i'm going to try to help you figure out which one would probably suit your needs the best and i'll do some playing examples and all kinds of stuff so you could actually hear what's going on uh before we dig into the di thing i guess for you people out there what is a di box and i'm gonna keep this really really simple uh the goal is to be able to plug my instrument into a mic preamp like this uh unfortunately mic preamps are designed for microphones they weren't designed to you know guitars to be plugged into them or keyboards to be plugged into them so all a di box really does at its heart is it converts your instrument signal to match the signal level and impedance characteristics of a microphone and that's exactly what these do so uh i have two main ones which is uh the active di and the passive di the passive di uses a step down transformer to convert your signal it doesn't need any power whatsoever and the active di box uh uses a powered built-in preamp to do that conversion for you the preamp design in these active di boxes are going to provide you with a lot more clean headroom it's gonna give a lot more signal level out so you could feed that mic preamp a little bit more and also uh it's gonna match a wider variety of instruments so if you want crystal clear sound pristine stuff i'd go active if you have a weak output passive pickups like the kind in this base over here uh the active di box will give you a little bit more goose energy to push that preamp just in the right way passive dis have always been popular because you can get them pretty cheap and you don't really need to power them but if you have the budget for an active di why would you spend money on a high-end passive one people that use uh instruments with line level outputs like a active bass or set of keyboards or a phone they actually like the passive di boxes because it's a more direct path to your preamp with this thing over here there's a lot more circuitry your signal has to go through before it gets to your mic pre but with here it's definitely a lot more straightforward less mess to get around your tone on top of that the transformer in here if you get a really good transformer they do some really nice things when you start pushing them a little bit you'll start kind of getting a little bit of compression a little bit of richness the same kind of feeling you get when you're pushing a really nice mic preamp you'll get that with a really good transformer circuit so if you are just trying to attenuate your line level signal i think a passive di box is a fantastic choice [Music] [Music] [Music] so now that we've gone over the active and the passive di boxes let's talk about some of the specialty ones this one is a piezo di box and these are made specifically for instruments with passive piezo pickups you'll see them in a lot of acoustic guitars mandolins violins stringed instruments passive piezo pickups are actually really really finicky and a lot of people always complain that they sound nasally and the reason why is because they need an incredibly high input impedance to sound really really good so even though these actually have quite a high input impedance uh active di boxing go up to about one meg or so the piezo di box can go up to 10 megs so it's a lot more and you'll realize once you actually use a piezo di box it really opens up that tone gets rid of some of that honk so what i'm going to do is i got this yamaha guitar from my boys at rufus guitar shop i'm going to go through an active a passive and a piezo di box and you can hear the difference for yourself [Music] [Applause] [Music] so the last style of the eye box we're going to talk about today is the character di box and i would like to equate it to kind of like a neve console you know how people like to record in studios with neve consoles because those preamps really bring out a nice character to the sound of your voice or your instruments it's the same thing with these character di boxes instead of being so focused on clarity it'll actually add a little bit of flavor to rich in your tone bring a little bit more life uh to lifeless tones uh so the one i picked today there's like two ones and solid state ones this one's the hdi and this one has a color knob there's a transformer in it and you could actually choose how much you want to push that transformer it also has a compressor and a presence knob so what i'm gonna do is i'm just gonna plug my guitar into it and let's see exactly what kind of characters we can get out of a character di box [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] all right uh so that's pretty much the video uh to summarize everything when it comes to passive di boxes they're usually pretty popular because they're cheap and they don't need power if you're looking for a high-end one pretty much what you're going to be paying for is the sound of the transformer it's going to impart a nice rich character to it so if you have an active instrument like a bass uh active bass or keyboards that you can push it a little bit this would be a really cool choice to wake them up and if you have a passive instrument they'll still work but you're just not going to be you know sending out too much signal to your preamp so just keep that in mind an active di box uh they're really good if you want crystal clear quality so it's going to be really pristine it's going to be very wide in the applications you could use it for almost anything and the only thing i'd keep in mind is they don't really sound the best when you're pushing them the same way a passive would so if you're giving it a hot signal just press the pad button to give yourself a little bit more headway the piezo dis feature a very very high input impedance which will match the needs for a passive piezo pickup really open up that sound one thing to note though if you have an active piezo system like uh your acoustic instrument needs a battery for the piezo you don't necessarily need this you could use any of these and they'll sound just fine these are the really work the magic with the passive piezo pickups and lastly we have the character di boxes think of them as like a a good vintage preamp for your instrument they add a little bit of color to your tone and uh bring your instrument to life a little bit and that is my video thank you all so much for watching please subscribe to the page if you haven't already check out the links in the description below and uh if you want to actually hear my reviews on all four of these different dis uh check it out on patreon i do my you know demo videos and i do all my analysis videos here but i do all my product reviews on patreon and uh i guess that being said i'd like to see you all soon take care and goodbye

today i'm talking about one of my favorite pieces of audio gear the rupert neve rndi direct box you'll hear for yourself how it sounds on electric guitar and bass and i'll show you some of my favorite features including one feature that instantly let me know that i needed to buy this di if you've been lucky enough to work on a neve console then you've already experienced the richness that rupert neves designs bring to an audio signal chain even if you haven't used a neve console you've probably still enjoyed the neve sound in many of your favorite records i usually don't put this much emphasis on the brand name when i review products but when it comes to neve gear i make an exception because of the reputation that rupert neve built over so many years with his designs the rndi features custom transformers and class a biased discrete fet amplifiers i recognize that that may mean absolutely nothing to you depending on your experience with electronics so let's listen to the difference that you can expect from a budget di like the whirlwind imp 2 and this premium di the rupert neve rndi [Music] the general manager at neve designs had a great analogy about the importance of high quality circuitry in a di box that he shared in this video clip but with the rndi we've been able to show that it is just like the the glass on the front of the camera it is that first step that captures the sound um and brings it into the recording environment or the live sound environment the rupert neve rndi is an active direct box which means that the internal circuitry requires power to operate that power is supplied through phantom power either from your audio interface your mixer or your mic preamp it's got a flat frequency response from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz and an extended frequency response from 10 hertz to 92 kilohertz another feature that really sets this di box apart from anything i've used in this price range is the input headroom you can send a pro line level signal to this di without the use of a pad so it's more than capable of handling any instrument or line level source that you need to connect this is already enough to justify the price in my opinion but when i heard about this next feature i knew this di was worth the investment when you flip this switch from instrument to speaker the di can accept up to a 1 000 watt signal from the power output of your amplifier if you love the sound of your guitar or bass amp this is going to be one of your favorite features too instead of connecting your instrument directly to the direct box and capturing the sound before the amplifier you can connect the output of the amplifier to the di and capture the sound after the amp just make sure to connect the through to a speaker so as to not damage a tube amplifier this means you'll be capable of capturing all of the tube warmth and saturation from your amp which probably accounts for a large part of your sound if you're anything like me [Music] if you want to try out one of these dis for yourself there's a link in the description below please remember to hit the like button and watch the next video to learn more i'll see you there