I'm not trying to do this (and would never), but I just discovered this at my church and I'm a bit perplexed.
Basically the front of the room is set up so that the band stage can be set up on either side and when the building was built the audio contractor put in a Whirlwind snake system where there is a MASS disconnect on each side of the room and depending on which one you are using you just unplug the snake from the disconnect and plug it into the other side. Makes sense. However to combine the two sides into one XLR per channel into the board they used this:
Whirlwind Contractor Splitter http://whirlwindusa.com/media/uploads/downloads/manuals/misc_box_manuals/spconinfo.pdf
It has the SP8 cards in it which each have 1 input, 2 isolated outputs, and a direct output. What they did is run one side into the input and then the other (the one currently in use) into the direct output. The lines that actually go to the board come out of the iso 1 output. It has phantom power yet if we plug anything that needs it in we still need to turn the phantom on the board on.
This all seems like a bad idea to me and it's always seemed like the gains have to be run awfully hot on the board. Now that I've saw this today I wonder if it could that be part of that? Can this unit be run backwards like this? I don't see why it wasn't just a passive set up seeing as only one side at a time ever will, and ever could, be plugged in to the single console.
Basically the front of the room is set up so that the band stage can be set up on either side and when the building was built the audio contractor put in a Whirlwind snake system where there is a MASS disconnect on each side of the room and depending on which one you are using you just unplug the snake from the disconnect and plug it into the other side. Makes sense. However to combine the two sides into one XLR per channel into the board they used this:
Whirlwind Contractor Splitter http://whirlwindusa.com/media/uploads/downloads/manuals/misc_box_manuals/spconinfo.pdf
It has the SP8 cards in it which each have 1 input, 2 isolated outputs, and a direct output. What they did is run one side into the input and then the other (the one currently in use) into the direct output. The lines that actually go to the board come out of the iso 1 output. It has phantom power yet if we plug anything that needs it in we still need to turn the phantom on the board on.
This all seems like a bad idea to me and it's always seemed like the gains have to be run awfully hot on the board. Now that I've saw this today I wonder if it could that be part of that? Can this unit be run backwards like this? I don't see why it wasn't just a passive set up seeing as only one side at a time ever will, and ever could, be plugged in to the single console.