Practice device help needed

[ped]

Ok guys I need a bit of advice about some practice gear.

At home I want to be able to practice along to music on my computer or iPod. My bass goes into my Vbass unit and comes out of that in stereo, as two 1/4" jacks. I want to be able to practice along with music through my headphones, too.

So, I want a small neat unit with two 1/4" inputs which work in stereo or mono when only one is used, a 3.5mm input for audio source, and an output also in 3.5mm.

Might be good if it had a volume control for each channel (bass and audio) and a master vol. Battery and mains power would be cool, also.

What's out there?

Cheers
ped

[gerryk]

[quote name='ped' post='796145' date='Apr 5 2010, 12:22 AM']Ok guys I need a bit of advice about some practice gear.

At home I want to be able to practice along to music on my computer or iPod. My bass goes into my Vbass unit and comes out of that in stereo, as two 1/4" jacks. I want to be able to practice along with music through my headphones, too.

So, I want a small neat unit with two 1/4" inputs which work in stereo or mono when only one is used, a 3.5mm input for audio source, and an output also in 3.5mm.

Might be good if it had a volume control for each channel (bass and audio) and a master vol. Battery and mains power would be cool, also.

What's out there?

Cheers
ped[/quote]

Any amount of small desktop mixers out there will do this for you. A 4 channel would allow you to use 2 channels for your stereo feeds from bass, lots of adaptors available if you need to convert headphone stereo jack to L/R phonos for input of ipod etc. You can go mega cheap with like of Beringer, or get something little more classy such as Mackie. There's also a tiny little pocket-sized gizmo from Samson called S-Mix, but it's all standard jack ins I think, but again if you're averse to adaptors, might suit you, but desk will give you much more control and flexibility.

[dave_bass5]

I practice this way at home.
I plug my bass in to one channel of my sound card, and go through something like guitar rig. This gives a stereo signal. I can run itunes/ipod/media player etc along with it.
I just have the stereo out from the sound card going to a split feed 3.5mm lead with one side feed my PC (crap) speakers and the other side going to one of these headphone amps. They cost about £15.
[url="http://head-direct.amazonwebstore.com/E5-Headphone-Amplifier-19.96-HeadDirect/M/B001P9EQH8.htm"]FiiO E5[/url]

I dont see the need for a mixer as every part of the set up has a volume control of some sort anyway.

If its just for ipod and no computer is involved then I do also have one of those cheap Behringer two channel mixers and it works fine.
[url="http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/product/8546-behringer-xenyx-502.html"]Behringer Xenyx 502[/url]
Or i use my Korg Pandora PX4D.

[Bottle]

I would seriously consider the M-Audio Fast-Track Pro or something similar (plus it has MIDI in and out, which you might find useful with your VBass unit). I've been using mine for the last year with headphones and/or monitor speakers (M-Audio BX8a) - works a treat with Windows Media Player, VLC, Youtube and iTunes for practice. Plus I can record tracks using Audacity if I want for later reference.

I'm assuming the 3.5mm input is for an iPod or something? If you hook up your iPod to your PC/laptop with the USB cable you can playout using iTunes directly. Then you can use the interface for playing along to the iPod tracks, has hardware monitoring as well so minimal latency.

HTH, Ian

[Eight]

I use a Behringer Xenyx mixer for this when using the cab would be too noisey. No battery but otherwise works well.

Line out from Ashdown head into one channel on the mixer. iPod/Netbook to the Tape-In RCAs (mixer switched to add "tape-in" to mix) I think the 3.5mm->RCA cable cost me about three quid. Sennheiser headpones (have their own 1/4" adaptor to plug into the phones socket on the mixer) or other headphones + 59p 3.5mm->1/4" adaptor.

[ped]

K guys many thanks for the help.

I always used to use a small mixer at my last house but my brother took it with him and latterly I was having some problems with the iPod sound, it came out really tinny and garbled, almost like ripping music at 100kbps - kind of glassy and distorted. i wasn't sure if it was the RCA jacks on the TAPE IN section or just a mismatch somehow.

I'll pick up another cheap mixer and see how I get on. Don't fancy getting my laptop involved as with my technical ability it's just asking for trouble, and in my experience music+computers don't mix (unless someone is doing that part for me)

Cheers
ped

[gelfin]

Why not heck out a Tascam CD BT1. It'a CD portble player with an input for your bass and a headphone out. It does all sorts of tricks like taking out the CD bassline and let you play over, you can slow down tracks without lowering pitch to help learn the bassline and much more.

[ped]

Yeah I thought about one of those. Depressingly, most of my music is stored digitally, and I also really need stereo inputs... do Tascam do one that'll fill those needs?

[BOD2]

iPods can be awkward to connect to mixers and the like. I believe it's all to do with impedance matching of the mixer inputs - the output from the iPod is meant to drive headphones, after all.

Provided the mixer has a level control for the Tape Inputs then it should work ok plugged in there - but you should experiment with the adjusting the output level from the iPod to see what gives best results.

If you have enough mixer inputs, the other option is to make use a "Y-lead" with a 3.5mm stereo min-jack for the iPod going to two 1/4 inch mono jacks, and then plug each jack into a separate channel on the mixer. You should then have more control of the channel input gain as well as the actual channel output volume.

If the mixetr has any stereo channels, with 2 input jacks on the channel and a "Pan" control then you could use teh same lead to connect to that stereo channel.

And always remember to try different iPod out levels and mixer levels until you get the best sound.

[ped]

Cheers mate - I actually have a dock for the iPod which I believe gives a line level output - the volume on the device doesn't affect the output from the dock. Might give better results...

Cheers
ped

[dave_bass5]

You can also get a lead that has a dock connector on one end and two Phono's on the other. This will give you a line out signal. I got one of these to use with our PA.

[ezbass]

There is the Tascam MP-BT1 which is an mp3 version of their CD product [url="http://www.tascam.com/products/mp-bt1.html"]http://www.tascam.com/products/mp-bt1.html[/url]. Conversely you could use whatever Korg's latest Pandora unit is [url="http://www.korg.co.uk/products/effects/pandora_px5d/fx_px5d.asp"]http://www.korg.co.uk/products/effects/pan...x5d/fx_px5d.asp[/url], I used to plug my CD player into one of the older models before I changed to Tascam for an all in one solution (although I do use the line in for stuff on my mp3 player).

[geoffbyrne]

I use it for everything. Has stereo out, stereo line in, line out, headphone out, EQ, gain, master, compression, chorus, tremelo, phase, noise gate, reverb & delay.

Enough amp models for fun & a few cab sims.

I use mine into the FX return of my Crate Powerblock & Ampeg Portabass 1x12.

G. Edited April 9, 2010 by geoffbyrne