external effects on s/pdif in Luna

pebre · Post by **pebre** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 7:49 am

Hi I want to connect an external effects processor to my luna board and use it for processing my external audio and internal VSTi's. Is this possible through the sfp mixer? (send/returns?) and since the luna has a combined digital in/output do I need a cable splitter or something?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Tue Jul 20, 2004 12:16 pm

the adapter cable is a mini-stereo to 2x cinch female, a regular part from hifi stores.
The cable MUST be a 75 ohm (video - usually with yellow plugs) type.
One could be tempted to apply a regular audio cable (mini-stereo to cinch), which WILL work somehow, but almost certainly spoils the digital stream, resulting in crackles of the sound. Those may not be obvious immediately, so listen carefully.

The VST stuff can be routed via Asio channels - just take care at latency compensation. The data may travel several times through the driver, depending on your routing and of course of the app and the external unit.

cheers, Tom

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 4:23 pm

Zaolla 75 OMH sp/dif is quite pricey, but I'm told it's degradation is non-existant due to using silver instead of copper for conductivity.

blazesboylan · Post by **blazesboylan** » Sun Aug 28, 2005 11:19 pm

Yeah usually cables that are "made of silver" have a silver coating on the connector that amounts to maybe 20% of the metal content of the connector... There are much more important aspects to a cable, such as thickness, than having a little dab of silver on an RCA jack.

$0.02!

Incidentally, the Luna S/PDIF in and out are 2 separate connectors.

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 2:40 pm

Actually it's gold connectors, with silver cabling. Mobile live recording engineers sware by them. Info available at Zaolla.com

Post by **garyb** » Mon Aug 29, 2005 7:52 pm

zoalla is premium cable as is monster and mogami(i actually own zoalla sp/dif cables, they are made by hosa....). premium cable DOES sound better. standard cable works just fine, however. just make sure that 75ohm sp/dif cable is used.

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Tue Aug 30, 2005 5:00 pm

Gary is absolutely correct. I went the cheap route, didn't even have 75 ohm. After cursing at the LCD for a while, the trusty ol' Planetz was the answer. In nearfield apps. there is an audible difference.