• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

I did something really stupid yesterday...

phreakout

phreakout

Well-known member
Yes, it's true. Even I am human.

For those who don't know, I run the sound, lighting and technology department at a local church. I have been using my Pismo (under OS 9.2.2 with Coaster 1.1.3) to record the audio of the Sunday morning church services. I usually just patch right out of the console to the Pismo and a pair of headphones to monitor the sound coming through. Well I had the headphones on and somehow the long headphone cord got caught around my foot. I went to walk away from the console and snagged on the cord, causing the Pismo's headphone jack to work only intermittently. Luckily I didn't take the whole laptop with it, landing on the floor, so-to-speak. :I

So now I have to disassemble the Pismo down to the DC-In/Sound board and the logic board to see if I can fix the jack, maybe even touch up (VERY CAREFULLY) the solder joints for that jack on the PCB. So wish me good luck and I'll keep everyone up to date with my progress.

73s de Phreakout. :cool:

 
protocol7

protocol7

Well-known member
Hope the repair works out ok. Just wanted to say thanks for putting me on to Coaster. I might need something like that soon for recording live performances and it sounds perfect for the job.

 
phreakout

phreakout

Well-known member
... to record the audio of the Sunday morning church services.
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Is that incase the Good Lord was busy and has to wait for the repeat?
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:lol:

Hope the repair works out ok. Just wanted to say thanks for putting me on to Coaster. I might need something like that soon for recording live performances and it sounds perfect for the job.
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Yeah, it's a great little program. Doesn't use up a lot of RAM and it records directly onto the hard drive, rather than putting it in RAM first then the hard drive later. The only downside: I wish it did work under OSX. If I can do that, I could have better resource management during the use of Coaster. Plus, sometimes it's a pain to reboot into OS9 every time you want to use the app and then reboot later back into OSX.

I had to work earlier, so I now have an open window to start working on the Pismo.

73s de Phreakout. :cool:

 
C

Christopher

Well-known member
Classic support?

And why not just use an actual CD recorder? Or if you have a digital mixer, record to flash drive. My church has both options and uses neither. :D

 
phreakout

phreakout

Well-known member
Classic support?
And why not just use an actual CD recorder? Or if you have a digital mixer, record to flash drive. My church has both options and uses neither. :D
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I would, if the church had the money. ::) Right now, I'm lucky to get by with what is already installed. They use a legendary Mackie SR24-4 console, which is all analog. If I had my choice and the money, I would go with either Allen & Heath or Yamaha MC7L or LS9 with motorized faders and remote digital presets. For a digital recorder, I am looking into getting a Marantz Flash Recorder (rack mounted) that uses CF cards and runs about $600 USD. But I can only hope for now that they can still keep me on the payroll. I've got enough on my plate with repairs and installations of equipment now. Just being able to use my Pismo for recording is neat enough and shows that even old technology can do the job (maybe even better) than this machine in the corner that's 2 years old.

73s de Phreakout. :cool:

 
Sludgedragon

Sludgedragon

Well-known member
I wonder if one of those cheap USB to audio things would work with OS9. My son's PC laptop needs that because the headphone port is toasted. It's USB on one end and headphone/microphone ports on the other.

 
phreakout

phreakout

Well-known member
Just don't try the Griffin Technology's iMic. I already tried and it doesn't work under OS9.x or earlier. There aren't many USB audio interfaces that work with Classic Mac OS versions, unless you count digital cards from M-Audio.

UPDATE: Well, it appears the headphone jack itself has cracked on the plastic housing, due to a combination of the cord snagging on Sunday and also old age. I have two choices at this point: (1) obviously replace the DC-In/Sound Board (about $80 USD, not including tax, S+H, etc.) or (2) rewire a new stereo 1/8" jack with a pigtail to the connections on the old DC-In/Sound board. The latter is much cheaper and I know it should work. Apparently iFixit.com is out-of-stock on the board. I'll look around elsewhere, too.

UPDATE II: It appears Apple uses a stereo 1/8" jack with a built-in N.C. (normally closed) switch, so that the Mac can disable the built-in speakers whenever you fully plug in a pair of headphones. So now I have to check and see which 2 of the 4 solder joints is the true ground for headphones. The replacement jack I have doesn't contain a built-in switch, so I'll have to add additional external wires and a simple switch to manually activate the jack. 2 of the 4 solder pads are closely tied in with the left channel. When you "close" the circuit between these two points, it tells the Mac to feed sound only to the built-in speakers; not even changing settings in the control panel will do anything. If you add a switch, it sends a signal triggering that sound should go through the headphone jack to the headphones.

73s de Phreakout. :cool:

 
C

Christopher

Well-known member
I use a Behrigner UCA200 since my Allen Heath board has rca out.

Legendary, you must be sarcastic, the VLZ/VLZ Pro series of Mackie boards were the worst ever made, fader problems, pot problems. Go on the Mackie forums back when the VLZ was top dog and you would have seen so many threads on them. No one could figure out a working remedy.

I switch from a SR 24.4 to a Allen Heath GL2200 32, it's amazing how much more useful the AH is compared to the Mackie. Less headroom, but fuller sound and better faders. Plus you can choose all 6 aux sends to be pre or post, not just 1-4.

 
phreakout

phreakout

Well-known member
Yay! It's fixed!

Well, except for the fact that I must now manually switch to enable either internal speakers or headphones. ::)

Okay, so here's what I did. Once the Pismo was disassembled down to the logic board and DC-In/Sound Board, I extracted the DC-In/Sound board, carefully desoldered the RF shield covering the Line-In and Line-Out jacks. I found that the plastic casing of the 1/8" jack was cracked and unrecoverable. So I desoldered the jack off of the board. I then used the continuity tester built-in on my digital multimeter and a spare unused stereo 1/8" plug, started probing around and taking notes. There are 4 contact points on the jack: 1 for the shield/ground, 1 for the right channel, 1 for the left channel and 1 for the built-in switch to disable the speakers when headphones are plugged in.

When nothing is plugged into the jack, the switch contact and left channel contact are a "closed" circuit. When something is plugged in, the contacts are "open" and the internal speakers are disabled. This culminated into a plan of building an external pigtail jack with in-line switch to manually control where the sound will be fed to. I used a 1 foot section of spare Cat 5e, a spare stereo 1/8" jack and a spare DPDT slide switch I had laying around.

As you all know, Cat 5e has 4 "twisted" pairs of wires inside the cable. I was also concerned about any extra noise (60Hz hum, etc.) that would result from improper Z (impedance) levels. I ended up keeping the pairs together when I went to solder the wires to their proper points on the DC-In/Sound board. The wiring basically was like this:

Orange-White and solid Orange along with Brown-White were soldered together to the left channel pad.

Blue-White and solid Blue were soldered together to the right channel pad.

Green-White and solid Green were soldered together to the shield/ground pad.

Solid Brown was soldered to the switch contact pad.

By keeping the "pairs" soldered together, except Brown, the impedance is dropped in half, because the wires are connected in parallel and twisted together. Three of the pairs are wired this way for the Left, Right and Ground connections. The Brown pair doesn't matter since this is going to be fed to a switch that will open and close to "short" out the left channel, causing the Pismo's DC-In/Sound board to alternate between built-in speakers or the headphone jack.

I ran the wire outside of the Pismo through the remaining headphone out hole in the case and soldered the wires to the proper places on the board. Once that was completed, I reassembled the Pismo and made sure it was booting/working as usual. I then shutdown the computer and got to work soldering together the switch and jack in-line to the Cat 5e cable. Once assembled, I then plugged in a pair of headphones to test and turned on the Pismo. I got OSX booted up and went right into the Sound Control Panel.

I flipped the switch back and forth. Lo and behold, it alternated in the description of feeding sound to Built-in Speakers or Headphones. I then tested volume on both speakers and headphones, reassured it was working properly. I then closed things down and started wrapping electrical tape around the switch, cable and jack. It may look ugly, but more importantly, it just works. I also saved myself some time and money having to buy another replacement board. iFixit.com currently sells the part, but is out of stock at this time. Plus, a replacement would have cost $80 USD plus shipping. I'm strapped for cash and will have to wait until I can afford to permanently replace part for part.

Well, now I can return to things more important, such as editing and producing on this neat laptop.

73s de Phreakout. :cool:

 
phreakout

phreakout

Well-known member
R$ doesn't carry a matching replacement part and the one they do have will be an ugly install anyways. So, really, I had no choice.

I also intend to put copies of the morning services on the web site, so having a flash recorder will help to free up the laptop for other work. I still will burn CDs for the members to take home anyway.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:

 
C

Christopher

Well-known member
R$ doesn't carry a matching replacement part and the one they do have will be an ugly install anyways. So, really, I had no choice.
I also intend to put copies of the morning services on the web site, so having a flash recorder will help to free up the laptop for other work. I still will burn CDs for the members to take home anyway.

73s de Phreakout. :rambo:
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Quick note, I found with the Behringer usb card I have. Apparently you get this awful ground loop noise through the recording and somehow it is also forced through the recording channel and out the mains. I don't remember if the VLZ mixer's have a direct out or not(haven't used my VLZ Pro in a couple years because of said issues) but I use that on the speaking channel so as to avoid the ghastly noise.

You could also nab the mono out channel with an array of adapters (XLR - 1/4" to female 1/4" to RCA). I've had to do this because the sunday school folks need music to play through the youth ministry audio system, but don't want to use the big mixer so I've had to take a 1/8" to RCA to rca- 1/4 male, to two female barrel 1/4" adapters to male 1/4" to xlr adapters and ran the xlr since it's a thicker cable and you can longer lengths to the smaller mixer on stage and from there it is converted back to 1/4".

Mmhmm, the world of making two audio systems coexist in the same room with the same speakers when you a budget of $40.00.

 
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