Hey guys,
Last night I was testing some of the outboard reverb units to make sure everything was hooked up correctly.
I had a mono drum track playing on one of the consoles channels and via aux send 1 I sent it to a lexicon 480L, (sent to the 480L's Left input only which drives its internal machine 1 and the first set of its stereo outs). I bought the 480L Left and Right returns up on 2 channels on the console. So I had the original on one fader and the effected signal on the other 2 faders.
I noticed that when I bought up the 480L return faders there was noticeable smearing/phasing happening, particularly with the hi hats and within a certain volume range, presumably towards matched level with the original. I set the 480L to DRY and did the following. I flipped the polarity on the fx return channels to see if the loom feeding the 480L was wired ass about but when I flipped it and got the levels matched the bottom end dropped a little which made me think that its not wired wrong. However, the severe "trough" you'd expect to hear with 2 almost identical signals reversed from one another didnt happen, it does happen but not like some of the other units in the same rack.
At this stage I thought it may be the arrival time difference from the cables going to and from the 480L so i decided to test another unit in the same rack (same loom, same distance which is around 10 meters total). I patched in a tube tech eq, set it to bypass and flipped its returns on the console, matched the levels, and almost all the signal was gone. Flipped back to normal it was reinforced, louder, etc. So the phase relationship between the original and the tube techs was much better than the phase relationship between the original and the 480L, even though its on the same loom and traveling the same distance.
You dont seem to notice it as much with a wetter reverb setting on the 480L, its a lot more obvious with shorter, drier, more room type settings but its still there and its not a good thing. even with its medium hall setting you could hear it and is unusable.
Next time I visit I will unplug the 480L's inputs and outputs and connect them together essentially just making the signal travel that loom path and see what happens.
Has anyone encountered this sort of thing before? Anyone got any suggestions on what may be happening?
thanks,