JamHub TourBus Owner's Manual - Page 9

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1. Step 2: Connections

4 musicians

Musician

Section

Musician

Section

For instrument connections please use a stereo cable or the

included mono-to-stereo adapter.

Stereo Adapter

Rear views

JamHub BedRoom

JamHub GreenRoom

JamHub TourBus

Musician

Section

Musician

Sections

4 +

Note: this musician is playing guitar

and keyboard and uses two sections

Mono Cable (acoustic guitar, mono bass, etc.)

A more detailed review of setting trim controls

Left Brain:

As with other equipment (mixers, recording interfaces, some

old tube amps, etc.) getting the trim right matters. So we've

simplified things by using a familiar structure: green = signal,

yellow = warning, red = clipping. We believe it's important to

understand gain structure and get it right every time. And it's

applicable to nearly every piece of music gear you'll own.

A simple analogy for trim and headroom

Let's think of music as a person bouncing up and down on a trampoline. They can bounce a small amount or a large amount.

This is "dynamics." Sometimes we bounce low, sometimes high. Most musicians are always changing the "bounce" because most

songs have both soft parts and loud parts.

Now let's move that trampoline into a room with a ceiling. Ever heard of the term "headroom?" Well, headroom is the distance

between our head and the ceiling in our trampoline room. The ceiling isn't moving, but we can raise and lower the trampoline

to give us more headroom, right? If our music is not very dynamic, that is our bounces are small, we need less headroom. If some

of our bounces are big, we'd better make sure the trampoline is far enough below the ceiling that when we bounce hard we don't hit

our head and run out of headroom.

So how do we move the trampoline up or down? With the "trim" control. The trim control sets the trampoline higher or lower.

We can see how close we are getting to the ceiling by watching the LEDs: green = ok, yellow = getting close, red = bumping our heads.

Clipping is the term engineers use to describe when the amp is out of room (when our heads are bumping on the ceiling). It describes

what's happening to the electrical signal. Our ears perceive clipping when we hear a sound that has been distorted or compressed.

With a guitar, distortion can sound good, but with vocals it usually does not sound good.

Signal to noise is the ratio of good stuff to bad stuff in your system. Signal is music. Noise is stuff you don't want. If we don't get the

trim turned up as high as possible, then the noise that is in the atmosphere will start to be as loud as the music. Think of the noise as

the floor in our trampoline room. We want to be as far off the floor as possible, so we can really bounce high. If the trampoline is too

close to the floor, we'll limit the quality of our jumps because our feet will hit the floor.

When setting up your trim levels, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, leave plenty of headroom so that as you get

going you won't get distortion from the system. Ideally, when you set the maximum trim control, you should be playing at the loudest

volume. For example, a singer should not whisper in the mic to set the trim control, but sing as loud as possible. If they whisper, we'll

set the trim (trampoline height) too high and run out of headroom the first time they yell "HEY". Conversely, if they yell too loudly in

the mic, the trim control will be set too low. Then when our singer whispers, we won't hear her above the rest of the instruments.

If you're setting the trim for an instrument, leave room for solos. Your solo volume should be solid green with a little yellow in the LED.

Then turn yourself down a bit with your device's foot pedal or volume control. That will leave room for you to jump to the top of the

mix when it's time for a solo.

For a vocal mic, you can simply move away from the mic, or "back off" the mic, to lower the volume. You see the pros do this all the

time. It's a great technique to know and is easy to learn, especially with a JamHub silent rehearsal studio.

We hope this section helped with the mystery of setting trim control. Over the years we've heard some crazy things about trim controls

like, "always set it to 9:00".; "Keep it as low as possible"; "Set all inputs the same"; And worse. The truth is, there is no "magic setting".

Every mic, instrument and piece of gear is different and needs its own unique setting. And even if your band has the exact same mic for

two singers, their individual voices are different. So they'll need their own unique trim settings. Just follow the LED's guidance, watch

the trim levels throughout the jam and you will be fine.

Additional GreenRoom and TourBus Features: Phantom Power

The GreenRoom and TourBus models both provide +48V phantom power for condenser mics. To turn it on, simply push on the button

found on the back of the unit and the red +48V LED will illuminate red.

What if only one person uses a condenser mic? No problem. Phantom power is for condenser mics, yet won't damage dynamic mics.

Check out the Wikipedia.org article on how phantom power works if you want to learn more

@ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_power.

Right Brain:

Read below, this is just good stuff to know for recording, live

sound and getting great sound into and out of your JamHub

silent rehearsal studio.