The other night I was about to play at this bar. I connected my Traktor Kontrol Z2 trough rca to the clubs allen & heath mixer, and the A&H was receving some noise. We proceded to try to connect the xlr cables that were connected to the A&H, directly to my Z2. We heard a big boom on the speakers. Something was wrong, so I unplugged everything. I was scared about my mixer, but it was turning on ok and seemed to be ok.
I used club’s mixer through the rest of the night.
When I went home, I checked my Z2, and it turns on ok, HID buttons, knobs and meters work perfectly, and traktor too…BUT all you can hear through every output (headphone, master, monitor) is a strong hum noise. No music at all.
I already contacted NI support, but wanted to know if you guys had an idea of what could’ve happened, and if it will be fixable.
Unfortunately bro this was user error. When you failed to kill the channels on the mixer, you left power flowing through those XLR’s. When you connected it to your mixer, it fried your grounds.
Imagine rubbing your socks on carpet then putting your finger in your car’s cigarette lighter.
Youre lucky this didnt cause any damage to the house sound system. If you dont have a warranty, feel free to pop your mixer open and post pics of the board (both sides).
Kill the channels on the PA system. A fix could be possible depending on the damage. I would def get in touch with NI about the customs issue. They might be able to help you with that bruv.
The thing is that they’d basically charge as much as a brand new mixer, and NI doesn’t even cover shipment costs.
So, it’d end up costing too much to do it. Not to mention the risks and specially, the time that it’d take (I reallly need this mixer, I have a couple of gigs booked, so I need to move fast.
HAve you looked into flight cost to countries with less strict customs policies? The Z2 would count as professional equipment and could be carried onto a flight without duty fees.
There had to have been something underlying in the mixer itself. There’s no way taking the output XLR’s out of one mixer and putting them into another would fry the mixer - power on or not. If anything you’d be more prone to be doing damage to the PA than the mixer. There’s no signal coming back the other way - it’s a one way signal.
Best of luck with this and it should be covered under the warranty if something like this happens. I’ve switched live cables a fair amount and never heard of anything like this happens (but it’s also why I stick with trying to use Rane or Pioneer mixers).
Probably because of the internal audio interface. And no matter who is the manufacturer, it’s always better to power down everything before plugging cables
That’s something I started suspecting…maybe, by mistake (or stupidity) they left the phantom power on?
I know sometimes live bands play there. But still, the A&H mixer was working fine with those cables :/, so I suppose there wasn’t phantom power on them.
I’m starting to want to just punch the sound guy (who clearly didn’t know much of what he was doing)
