Re: [LAU] My Tascam US-122

From: Arnold Krille <arnold@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Thu Aug 14 2008 - 16:03:13 EEST

Am Mittwoch, 13. August 2008 schrieb Martin Horn:
> I am an electrical engineer myself and here are the facts again:

From the facts you might be right in this special case. BUT: When someone
starts doing this on his laptop (even if it might not be dangerous), he will
not stop at using this on his laptop. He well also start using tape on the
cords of power amps and dimmer packs. And then it starts to get _really_
dangerous. And that is the psychologic reason for me (and many others) to
scream "Don't ever do that".

And even though the power cord connecting to the laptop is mostly a two pin,
there is still the chance of faults in the psu itself. And when something bad
happens there, the third earthing connector is there to prevent further
damage (by kicking the fuse of the power). If you disconnect this safety, you
endanger your laptop and possibly your (and your fellow musicians) life.
BTW: If there was no connection between the earth pin and the laptops pin, you
wouldn't get ground-loops. So there definitely is a connection. And its there
with a purpose. Even if that purpose is "only" safety....

So, @Shawn, get an isolating transformer or (even better) a real DI-Box. The
later will make your equipment have a symmetric XLR-output which techs like a
lot more then asymmetric jacks. And disconnecting the shielding on an
XLR-cable (at one end and be aware that phantom power doesn't work after
this) is the allowed solution to this problems. Most DI-boxes even have a
small switch to disconnect the earth so you don't have to solder special
cables.

Have fun and stay save,

Arnold

-- 
visit http://www.arnoldarts.de/
---
Hi, I am a .signature virus. Please copy me into your ~/.signature and send me 
to all your contacts.
After a month or so log in as root and do a "rm -rf /". Or ask your 
administrator to do so...

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-user

Received on Thu Aug 14 16:15:02 2008

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Aug 14 2008 - 16:15:02 EEST