Meeting Topic: CRAS DI Box Build
Speaker Name: Jeff Harris - CRAS Head tech & Instructor
Meeting Location: Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences 1205 N Fiesta Blvd Gilbert Az
This Thursday CRAS AES held a passive DI box build in our live sound room. Jeff Harris, who is one of the Conservatory's instructors and head tech, kicked off the build letting us know that the DI's we were about to build are extremely reliable and work very well. The problem with building passive DI boxes are the cost of the transformers. The transformers we used today are from Germany and are hard to come by. Each participant received a DI box kit which included a metal case, a ground lift switch, male XLR jack, interconnect wires, TS connectors and of course some solder. After learning the ins and outs of how the internal parts work, we dug into to soldering all the connections and had no hesitation in asking Mr. Harris if our soldering techniques were on point.
When the build was complete, it was on to the tech office for testing where Jeff hooked up each individual DI box to an oscilloscope to test the flat frequency response. Then he hooked them up to a quant asylum audio analyzer to test for harmonic distortion, frequency response and signal to noise ratio. At the end of the day, all DI boxes passed with flying colors
As a bonus, while we were in the Tech office, Jeff Harris gave us a sneak peak of what an I/O module looks like from a Neotek, an API, and an SSL when removed from the console.
Written By: CRAS AES Secretary - Daniel Stephenson II (2015-7-3pt)
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