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Q:
What's a direct box? Someone said I need
one in my studio and I didn't want to appear dumb,
but I don't know what it does.
A:
With special thanks to the Sweetwater Web
site guys, here is the official "Word Of The Day" defini-
tion. Direct Box: Often abbreviated DI (for direct inser-
tion), a device commonly used to convert high imped-
ance, unbalanced signals from a stage instrument (like
a guitar, bass or keyboard) into low impedance bal-
anced signals. This puts the signal at the proper volt-
age level for the mixer and prevents the instrument
from becoming loaded down (with too low an imped-
ance), which could cause tonal shifts and distortion. It
also allows the signal to be transmitted over long
lengths of cable. DIs are always used in live sound to
get a signal from an instrument on stage out to the
mixing board, which can be as much as 500 feet away.
A simple direct box consists only of a small trans-
former, but more sophisticated designs employ elec-
tronic gain stages that resemble the input section of a
modern instrument amp. They may also have some
combination of ground lift switches, EQ switches, level
matching switches, isolated line outputs, and more.
Q:
Can I use any CD-ROM drive with my K2000
or do I need a certain brand? I see that they're really
cheap in some of the big computer catalogs, but I don't
want to waste time sending it back if it won't work.
A:
We have found that most SCSI CD-ROM drives
do work with the K2000. However, with the huge num-
ber of drives out there we have only been able to test a
random sampling. We did find that
most
NEC drives
and
most all
brands of CD recorders
do not
work with
the K2000 and the Kurzweil
does not
work with
any
IDE CD-ROMs. You want to make sure you have the
most current OS (3.54) installed in your K2000 as it
greatly expands the number of CD-ROM drives that
work with it. Here at Sweetwater, we carry several very
affordable drives from 4x to 24x speeds that are guar-
anteed to work with the Kurzweil.
Q:
Is there any way to connect more than six
external SCSI devices to a Mac? I have the Mac at one
end and my Roland sampler at the other, but I also
have a scanner, two external hard drives, an internal
hard drive, a CD-ROM drive and a Zip drive. I'd also
like to add a tape back-up system and I don't want to
keep swapping out cables. Help!
A:
There are a couple of solutions to add more
than seven SCSI devices to your Mac. Your best bet is
to install an additional SCSI bus to your Mac via a third
party PCI card. These cards give you at least seven more
SCSI IDs. An additional benefit is that they are usually
even faster at sending and receiving data than the in-
ternal Mac bus. The other solution is a SCSI switcher
box, but here you normally have to power cycle the
computer to change which devices are active.
NO DELAYS! ORDERS PROCESSED SAME DAY!
In most cases, orders ship the same day we receive them!
Sweet Notes Early Fall 1998 Page 5
By Chuck and Brenda Surack
Owners, Sweetwater Sound
Nothing upsets customers, retailers
and manufacturers alike more than the
dreaded “vaporware” syndrome. We’ve
discussed it here before, but it’s worth talk-
ing about again since it’s something that
will more than likely always exist.
Before we get into the entire subject,
we want to give you the good news: Al-
most all of the most eagerly anticipated
products ever designed are now shipping.
That’s right, if you’ve been hanging on,
waiting for your Mackie digital mixer,
Alesis M20, Event Electronics Layla,
Roland VS-1680, or MOTU 2408 to arrive,
your wait is over. These products are ship-
ping right now and we expect to get
caught up with all our back orders within the next few weeks
or so (your order may even be at your doorstep right now).
So why does this situation exist? There are several rea-
sons. Maybe the one that gets overlooked the most is that
manufacturers do not want to ship you a product that won’t
do what they’ve promised. They want it to work perfectly and
continue performing for you for many years to come. That
means they have to subject these products to an incredibly
rigorous series of tests. If a tiny component fails — even a
single IC chip or power supply — it can send the item back
to the drawing board. More
typically, because manufac-
turers often buy certain parts
from other vendors, they have
to wait until that vendor fixes
the problem and gets them
parts that will work correctly.
Meanwhile, because of
advertising deadlines that are
at least three to four months
ahead of the anticipated re-
lease date of a certain piece
of equipment, the marketing
people have to start doing art-
work and placing ads, not
knowing if a month down the road there might be a produc-
tion glitch. Because competition for musicians’ dollars is
pretty fierce these days, no manufacturer can possibly wait
until all testing is complete and product is in the warehouse
before beginning to advertise. They cannot afford to have
thousands of mixers or recorders or whatever sitting around
for three or four months while waiting for the ads to start
appearing. Some companies could actually go bankrupt if
that happened — yes, there is that much at stake.
So they look ahead and make a “best guess” estimate of
when their latest, hottest item might start shipping. Then
they place ads. They tell us and we tell you. And then we all
keep our fingers crossed.
Because all of us want the best new gear, we just have to
be a little more patient once in a while. When that bright,
shiny new digital wondertool shows up on your doorstep and
gets integrated into your studio, you want to be sure it’s go-
ing to perform up to the manufacturers high standards.
Thanks to all the intensive testing, odds are good that it will.
A short delay in getting what we want might be a little frus-
trating, but having to send
something back for repair is,
at best, a hassle you can do
without. So let’s all be glad
that manufacturers care
enough about their custom-
ers to make darn sure that
any product they release will
give them years and years of
trouble free service.
On another topic, many
of you can look forward to re-
ceiving a copy of our brand
spanking new, up-to-the-
minute “Welcome to
Sweetwater” video. Be-
cause things have changed a
lot around here a lot since
our last video in 1994, we wanted to give customers a sense
of just how things have grown and how we operate on a day-
to-day basis so they can have a better understanding of all
the many ways we go to extremes to take care of our custom-
ers. Videos will be shipping soon. Let us know how you like it.
Which leads us to our next point (it’s nice when it works
out like that). We always, always want to hear from you. We
want to know what you like, and what you feel we are doing
right. But we also want to know if you’re unhappy or if you
think there’s something we can do that will make dealing
with Sweetwater an even bet-
ter experience.
As most of you know, the
majority of our customers
come back to us time and
time again when they need
something. But we are not
perfect quite yet: There are
about 130 people here now,
and once in a while, one of
them is going to make a mis-
take — which is only hu-
man considering the hun-
dreds of orders that get filled
on a typical day here. But in
some cases this leads to misunderstandings with customers,
who are also only human and therefore may get upset when
something goes wrong.
We can say with absolute certainty that every single per-
son here at Sweetwater wants you to be happy with your new
purchase. We even want you to feel good if you call us and
get information about a certain item, and then choose not
to purchase it from us. But the only way we can be sure that
you are completely satisfied is if you let us know.
We read every single letter, fax or e-mail that arrives
here without exception. If there’s a problem, it gets solved
— immediately. If you’re totally ecstatic (and almost all of
our customers are), we let everyone know during our regular
weekly meetings. This feedback allows us to better serve ev-
ery single customer, now and in the years to come.
So take a couple of minutes, sit down and let us know
how we’re doing. Our philosophy has always been: “If you’re
not happy, we’re not happy.” That’s not some snappy adver-
tising slogan made up by some ad agency, it’s plain and
simple our way of doing business every day!
Mackie’s Digital 8•Bus is one of the hottest products to
come along in years — and it’s shipping now!