DriveRack PA XLR Input Polarity

stgislander

Our church's DriveRack PA is currently connected to a Mackie 1604-VLZ Pro mixer. The polarity of the Mackie 1604-VLZ Pro 1/4" TRS balanced Main ouputs is Tip = (+) Hot, Ring = (-) Cold, and Sleeve = Ground. Tomorrow we are removing the 1604-VLZ Pro for service. We are planning on temporarily replacing it with a Mackie CR-1604 mixer. I just discovered that the polarity of the Mackie 1/4" TRS balanced Main ouputs on the CR-1604 are Tip = (-) Cold, Ring = (+) Hot, and Sleeve = Ground.

Since I do not have a schematic, can you tell me if this polarity reversal is a problem?

Thanks. - stgislander

Gadget

Not as long as the scheme is carried throughout...in other words, if your running stereo, and or all the connections are the same then you should have no problems...

There must be a billion of these Mackie "pieces" in churches all over the world...UFDA...
Gadget

stgislander

Thanks Gadget.

Correct, we were not planning on doing anything different. Just swapping out mixers. We have a Monster Cable Dual XLR Male to 1/4" TRS converter cable to interface the Mackie left and right Main outs to the DriveRack PAs left and right XLR ins. When I saw the reversal of the Main out polarity between the two Mackie mixers, I had visions of "smoking" the DriveRack PA. That's all I need to do... purchase a new DriveRack PA.

I guess Mackie mixers are popular in churches because of their price. What brand do you prefer?

- stgislander

Gadget

A balanced system using three legs like the XLR and TRS send the signals via the 2 and 3 pins on the XLR and tip and sleeve on the 1/4" jack. Pin one/sleeve act as a shield that can even be opened at one end to eliminate ground loops if potential differences between equipment chassis exists...

The problem starts when the signal is reversed on one side of a stereo run...otherwise it makes no real difference which way the signal flows... in times past, some manufacturers reversed the signal, like Soundcraft, where pin 3 was hot and 2 was neutral.

I have never liked the Mackie sound. The Eq sections are sterile and infective, the headroom is suspect, and the overall sound is lackluster and mediocre...

In the same basic price range Allen and Heath have always been a standout, recently Presonus and Yamaha have come up with some interesting all in one solutions that eliminate the need for any outboard processing since they possess dynamics like compression, limiting and gating on every channel. They also have variable hipass and lopass filters on every chammel, built in effects processing, and multi band (even fully parametric) eq's per channels.

If your in the "analog" only crowd APB Dynasonics is in a whole other world sonically, but quite a bit more money.

Gadget