DI boxes?

[stingrayPete1977]

What's the crack with di boxes then?, I use active basses exclusively and legend has it I should use a passive box as my ampless setup into the mixer. 

At the moment I'm using a behringer bdi21 but just as a di, the actual pedal is switched off. 

I tried a Chord brand one in the practice studio and it sounded worse to my ears. 

I'd like to throw a passive di in the back of a rack mount rather than faff with powering one, what should I get? what's the difference between all these passive boxes? 

Thanks. 

[EBS_freak]

6 hours ago, stingrayPete1977 said:

What's the crack with di boxes then?, I use active basses exclusively and legend has it I should use a passive box as my ampless setup into the mixer. 

At the moment I'm using a behringer bdi21 but just as a di, the actual pedal is switched off. 

I tried a Chord brand one in the practice studio and it sounded worse to my ears. 

I'd like to throw a passive di in the back of a rack mount rather than faff with powering one, what should I get? what's the difference between all these passive boxes? 

Thanks. 

Powering one is not bad... you have phantom!

Whats the issue that you are trying to address- I remember we spoke briefly about it.. but can't remember the detail!

[stingrayPete1977]

Mostly just to match the bass output to the mixer input, does sound better to me with the di than without. 

We need a pie and rack box design night! 

[Dan Dare]

Behringer DIs are fine for the money, but there are better. At the budget end of things, I like the passive Palmers. If you want active, Orchid (made in sunny Devon) are excellent, well-priced and get good reviews. If you want to go mad/treat yourself, Radial are as good as any.

[stingrayPete1977]

The Orchid was what ebs freak suggested to me, when you say better exactly what differences can I expect? I've never known something so wildy different in price. 

[stingrayPete1977]

And thoughts on the passive active thing please? 

[paul_c2]

"They say" for an active bass use a passive DI; and a passive bass use an active DI. This is simply so the signal is in roughly the right ballpark for the mixer to accept, without too much gain needed (which will reduce headroom). But I use a passive DI with a passive bass and it sounds fine, just needs the gain turning up a lot compared to other sources. I have an active DI in the bag too (just in case). Its also worth mentioning an active DI (depending on model, but I think most/all do it) can run off batteries. Of course, then its one more thing in the group of things which need a battery, so never going to be 100% reliable unlike a passive DI or active with phantom.

Some (most) mixers have an instrument-capable input. I've only tried it once, but I got a bunch of pops and clicks when manipulating the volume control on the bass - and nothing like that with a DI box. So its worth going thru a DI box. Also, mixers will only have one or a few instrument inputs compared to the number of XLR or balanced line inputs. 

I can't really comment on sound quality because I haven't done rigorous back-to-back blind listening testing. But they're pretty simple devices, I'd not expect them to alter the tone. So a favourite is normally for reasons other than ultimate sound quality, unless its weird or faulty or whatever. Its going to be one of them things which has to deal with the rough & tumble of live performances so its worth going for a physically robust one.

Also, learn what all the switches do on it, you'll probably be okay 99% of the time but one day you'll need a feature such as ground lift or phase invert, etc.

[stingrayPete1977]

Thanks Paul that's very helpful. 

[itu]

My choice was an age old Countryman type 85. It works with a 9 V battery or Phantom. Box is so tough, that you can drive over it. All connections are recessed, so it is very close to indestructible. Price was decent (£60, 2nd hand) and as broadcasting companies have used them, I think it has to be good enough. Seems to work well with passive and active basses.

[BigRedX]

If all you want you DI box to do is to present a balanced line signal at the appropriate level for a standard mixer XLR input, then I would go for a good quality passive DI Box every time. No need to worry about phantom power or batteries going flat. I'm using EMO DI Boxes. They single and dual DI in stand-alone boxes and 6 and 8-way rack mounted DI units. They are not the cheapest of DI Boxes, but the single and dual units are pretty much bomb-proof and and PA engineer who knows their equipment will be happy to be presented with a signal from them.

I've had problems with the Behringer DI boxes with some pieces of equipment in the past so couldn't really recommend them.

[stingrayPete1977]

Long term I'm probably going to rack mount my xr mixer so a passive box in the back hidden with the router etc will be ideal, basically put the box down plug my bass into a jack on a blank 1u or 2u strip with some other bits, USB charge points for Ipads etc, a dual lead that's feeding my in ears and bass and that's me setup!

I'll have a look at the emo boxes then too, thanks BRX. 

[Jack]

You can absolutely use a passive DI with passive bass, but it's not always optimal. The problem is that a passive DI is literally a transformer with a certain ratio (in order to get from high impedance to low) and so the input impedance of a passive DI can be relatively low. As any double bass player will attest to, plugging something really high impedance into a low impedance input will result in a weak, trebly, almost out-of-phase type sound. The thing is, that depends far too much on your bass and DI box to be all sweeping and generalising about it. One thing is pretty much a given though, a good passive box and a good active box will be equally good but a cheap active box is usually WAY better than a cheap passive. The only component in a passive DI is a transformer and you can tell a cheap one by how it handles (or doesn't handle) low frequencies.

 

If the box is always in a mixer rack (and you're always running the mixer) then phantom power shouldn't be a problem should it? If that's the case then you can use pretty much whatever you want. For active, I love the Countryman Type 85 and the bigger Orchid, as the smaller one is phantom only and doesn't have a pass through. In this one circumstance that wouldn't be a problem but why limit yourself down the line! If you can definitely get away with passive then I think it's hard to beat the £70 or so you'll pay for a radial stagebug 2. That's what I ended up with in the back of my rack wired into my Line 6 Helix. Great DI, and tiny.

 

What's wrong with getting fancy though? That BDI21 is decent enough DI. There are plenty more bass-specific preamps out there like that as I'm sure you know. The great thing about something like a Sansamp is that you've got the choice of phantom, 9V battery or standard boss power, making it a lot more versatile.

 

Sorry for waffling, it occurred to me about a week ago that I've got something like 15 different DI boxes if you include pure DIs, preamps, bass pedals with DIs, etc. They're useful and interesting and I've been hooked ever since I got my first MXR M80 and realised that an amp can be optional!

Edited March 5, 2019 by Jack

[stingrayPete1977]

Thanks Jack that's interesting as the music shop /studio where we practice had a passive and active box we borrowed to see how the guitar sounded and the passive box was more expensive which seemed odd. 

[EBS_freak]

7 minutes ago, stingrayPete1977 said:

Thanks Jack that's interesting as the music shop /studio where we practice had a passive and active box we borrowed to see how the guitar sounded and the passive box was more expensive which seemed odd. 

Thats the cost of the transformer in play... Some of the cheaper active DI boxes are transformer less - but will actually sound better than their transformer based counter parts.

[stingrayPete1977]

Never given them much though before, remove from sticky beer soaked puddle on stage, plug in and play! 

I've used my various Genz heads for recording but that's where my technical involvement has ended. 

[Jack]

5 hours ago, stingrayPete1977 said:

Thanks Jack that's interesting as the music shop /studio where we practice had a passive and active box we borrowed to see how the guitar sounded and the passive box was more expensive which seemed odd. 

When your entire product is a metal box with less than 50p worth of 1/4" and xlr jacks, all that's left to pay for is the marketing department and the transformer, either of which can cost a fortune.

 

With a passive box you need a decent transformer and that's that. With an active design you just need the same resistors and capacitors that you buy from maplin to build every other stompbox. It's easier to do acceptably on a budget.

Edited March 5, 2019 by Jack

[stingrayPete1977]

I suppose the trick now is working out what percentage is metal box, marketing and transformer then! Thanks.