Little Helper from Omnitronic – Part I
Let’s talk about the so called „Little Helpers“ from Omnitronic. They have already simplified or even saved quite a few events. In the first part of our series we are concentrating on devices which can rather be found on live settings. Installation and studio environment are the topics of the second part.
It is probably the absolute classic assistant in event industry: the DI-Box (DI means “direct injection”, sometimes also “direct input”). On live stages the DI-Box has to complete three missions at once. First of all, impedance transformation. To directly supply a signal from keyboards, synthesizers, electric guitars or basses into the multicore and finally into the FOH mixer, the very high-resistant output impedance of these instruments has to be transformed. Normally, an electric guitar has an output impedance of several thousand ohms whereas a microphone features only a few hundred ohms. Now, the DI-Box, from a technical point of view, transforms an instrument signal into a microphone signal – thus preparing the signal for further processing in a mixer. The inputs of the instruments’ amplifiers are equipped accordingly and thereby don’t have to be supplied with a transformed signal. Because of this it is possible to simultaneously tap the input signal of the DI-Box and to feed it into the amplifier, which is mostly used as stage monitor. Read more »
