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Post subject: Low Levels - Passport 500 with Roland V-Drums
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 11:35 am
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I recently got my Passport 500 and when using a mic the levels are great, but I tried plugging in a set of Roland V-Drums and even with their volume full up and the level full up on the Passport the mic levels are way louder.

What am I missing?

Thanks!


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Post subject: Re: Low Levels - Passport 500 with Roland V-Drums
Posted: Mon Mar 05, 2012 3:10 pm
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There's a lot of information you are not telling us. I looked up "Roland V-Drums" and see that there is a wide range of equipment that goes by that name. It's a generic name for a range of electronic drum systems. Help us out by telling us which model you are working with.

I'm assuming that you are plugging in the drum components into a sound module, and that you are connecting the sound module into your Passport. Looking at the owner's manual you should be connecting the two 1/4" Master Out ports to two 1/4" ports on one of your stereo channels of the Passport (channel 7 or 8) using two "instrument" cables (the same cables that electric guitars use to plug into an amp). Don't use speaker cables. The plugs are identical, but the cables are very different by design.

I guess you could also use an adapter to go from your 1/4" stereo headphone jack to the 1/8" stereo input jack for channel 7 or 8. That should work, though likely not quite as well.

You should NOT be connecting the drums directly into the Passport without going through the sound module first. That's not how the V-Drums were designed to be used.

The manual for the Roland V-Drums is a bit tedious. The focus is so much on the interface to their software, they don't mention anything about "line level" for these ports, though they do illustrate those ports connected to an amp, so I'd assume it would have to be line level.

The "Pad" button on your PassPort changes the volume level at the XLR port for input by 20db. That's the difference between line level and mic level. The switch doesn't affect any of the 1/4" inputs, however, because the assumption is that everything that goes through a 1/4" port SHOULD be line level.

I just found on page 115 of the first manual on their list of V-Drum kits that you have to assign which drums go to the Master Output channels. The headphone port always plays all the sound, but the Master Output port only plays what you assign to it.

It looks like a fairly complex unit, judging by the manual. My suspicion is that the issue is with the drum kit and not the Passport. In trying to be extremely versatile, the Roland guys have made it very easy to get no output from their unit.


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Post subject: Re: Low Levels - Passport 500 with Roland V-Drums
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 11:29 am
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Hello ContraCaller,

Thank you so much for your quick and detailed response! I really appreciate your help and am sorry you had to peruse the V-Drums manual...very tedious as are most manuals and ALL of Roland's manuals. This is my first PA and so I have much to learn.

I tried the headphone output and that does seem to deliver a hotter signal. The mic I'm using (http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wls_s ... index.html) is still significantly louder (strange) -- It's channel on the Passport is turned up about 20% while the drum channel is full-up -- but at least now I have a chance of balancing their levels.

I hope you don't mind, but while I have your attention can you also help me understand what I need to use an electric guitar with the Passport? I've been reading that I'll need a preamp to boost the signal, but as I don't play guitar and this is something I'll only need occasionally, I don't want to invest a whole lot of money in a solution. Are you aware of a low-cost preamp that might do the trick?

Thank you again!


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Post subject: Re: Low Levels - Passport 500 with Roland V-Drums
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 1:33 pm
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Aspiring Musician
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The link you sent says the output for the receiver is through a 1/4" TS port, so I'd expect that to be a line-level signal. If you are using some sort of adapter to plug it into an XLR port on the Passport, you might try the Pad button to drop the signal level and see if that makes the volume closer to 60% or higher. Otherwise 20% is apparently what it needs.

I have a Shure headset radio mic that connects via XLR and it tends to be a bit hot as well. Volume level is often around 40% to match other mics that are around 60%. Mine does have a three-position switch inside the battery compartment to control how hot the mic is. While the hottest position is somewhat hot, the middle position is apparently for people who scream a lot, and the quiet position must be for some other microphone. This switch is in the transmitter, which apparently is a model that gets used with several different Shure mics, so likely the other settings are for those other mics. Your unit may have a similar adjuster.

As for guitars, I'm pretty sure you can plug a guitar straight into the Passport and it should be loud enough, though it might not have the tone quality that you want. Most of the electric guitar sounds you hear from the music business has been run through some sort of signal processing. Unvarnished electric guitar is not as interesting a sound as you might expect.

Electric guitar playing often involves overdriving the amp. Basically, if you turn an amp up too high, it changes the tone quality of the sound, and rock and roll players have come to love that altered sound so much that they have strong opinions about the qualities that specific amplifiers exhibit when they are overdriven. There are pre-amps that simulate this overdrive sound, and people have put a lot of research money into building chips that simulate the tone qualities of tube amplifies (from before the days of transistors) when they are just about to burn out.

Then there's compression. The affects box turns down the volume when you strike a note, and as the note dies out acoustically, the box turns the volume up, so instead of hearing:

"DAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa........."

You hear:

"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

And then there's reverb, flanger (a special variation on the idea of reverb) and stereo chorus (an even more special variation on the idea of reverb). And they keep coming up with new effects (many of which are based on overdrive, compression and/or reverb).

Me? I prefer acoustic guitar. You do more with your fingers and less with the stomp boxes. Anyway, you should not need a preamp for the electric guitar, except to get these other kinds of sounds out of the guitar, and you can do that with effects boxes. I've read that amps with channels built specially for guitar have "High-Z", but nobody has succeeded in explaining to me exactly what that is well enough for me to understand it, and when I've worked with equipment that has a "High-Z" switch, I've flipped that sucker back and forth and I can't hear the difference. I'm told that it's huge, but it's lost on me.


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Post subject: Re: Low Levels - Passport 500 with Roland V-Drums
Posted: Tue Mar 06, 2012 1:42 pm
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Thanks again!
Happy noise making...


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