TDM Audio 32CL-2 v.2 - Manual (Page 11)

© 1996 TDM Design, Inc. Compressor/Limiter Owner’s Manual Page 11
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Solder the hot lead of the other cable to the ring of the tip-ring-sleeve phone plug.
Now you have what resembles a “Y” cable, but one end is a tip-ring-sleeve plug, and the two ends
that it splits out into are regular phone plugs. On the mixing console, plug the tip-ring-sleeve plug
into the insert connector for the channel that you wish to insert the compressor into. Plug the ¼”
phone plug marked “Tip” into the output of a channel of the compressor/limiter. Plug the remain-
ing ¼” phone plug into the input of the same channel. If this setup does not work correctly,
reverse the input and output because a few mixing consoles are set up to work the other way
around.
A helpful hint: If your TDM compressor/limiter will mainly be used to insert into channels on a
mixing console, you might want to create all of the insert cables and hook them up to the com-
pressor/limiter in the rack. Mark the tip-ring-sleeve insert plug of each cable with the channel
number that it corresponds to in the compressor/limiter. That way, if you want to put a compres-
sor/limiter on a specific channel, you can just find the plug with the correct number, plug it into
the channel insert, and adjust the corresponding channel on the compressor/limiter.
Compressing Electronic Instruments
The TDM 32CL series compressor/limiter can also be hooked up to directly compress electronic
instruments. When electronic instruments are compressed, it is usually to produce a certain kind
of sound or special effect rather than to smooth out the dynamic range. Connecting the unit to an
electronic instrument rig is straightforward.
For best results, the signal that you feed into the TDM 32CL series compressor/limiter should be a
line-level signal. Guitars and some keyboard instruments produce a signal that is much lower than
a line-level signal. These low-level signals do not work very well with the TDM 32CL series
compressor/limiters because often they are not hot enough to pass even the lowest thresholds, and
because they result in noisy operation. Additionally, magnetic pickups like those found on passive
electric guitars require special input impedance characteristics to sound right. That does not mean
that you can’t use your TDM 32CL series compressor/limiter with electric guitars and other low-
signal-level musical instruments. It simply means that the level of the signal must be amplified
before it is fed into the compressor/limiter.
If your rig has an effects loop, you might want to insert the compressor/limiter into it. Effects
loops are designed to operate at line level. To insert the TDM 32CL series compressor/limiter into
an instrument effects loop, connect the effects loop send to a compressor/limiter channel’s input.
Then connect the output of the same channel to the effects loop return.
With most effects loops this will work fine. Some amplifiers and instrument preamps have effects
loops that do not feed 100% of the signal through the loop. These kinds of preamps and amplifi-
ers will not work as well with a compressor/limiter. If you are using a separate preamp and
amplifier, you can insert the unit between the preamp and amplifier in the signal chain. To do this,
connect the output of the preamp to the input of a channel of the compressor/limiter. Connect the
output of the same channel to the input of the amplifier.