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Balanced signals connect with either XLR connectors or TRS (tip, ring 
sleeve) connectors.  Mona uses XLR connectors for connecting 
microphones and TRS connectors for connecting balanced line level signals.  

 
The three sections of a TRS connector are used to transmit the three 
components of a balanced signal (T = plus, R = minus, S = ground). Mona 
will also accommodate the two conductor unbalanced style connector. 
 

Dynamic Range 

 
 Dynamic range represents the difference between the maximum signal that 
can be recorded and the “noise floor”, or level of noise with no signal 
present.  A system with a high dynamic range will be quieter than one with a 
lower dynamic range.  Dynamic range is a very important specification and 
Mona uses converters that have very high dynamic range.    
 
Theoretically, a 24-bit system has a dynamic range of 144 dB and a 16-bit 
system has a dynamic range of 96 dB.  Two questions immediately come to 
mind:  

1)  Why does Mona only have a dynamic range of 115 to 116 dB? 
2)  For mastering 16-bit CDs with a dynamic range of 96dB, isn’t 

anything more than 96dB just overkill? 

 
First, today’s analog to digital converters typically produce a full-scale input 
voltage with an input of +7 dBu.  If they were to have 144 dB of dynamic 
range, they would have to be capable of resolving signals as small as –137 
dBu (7 dBu – 144 dBu) or approximately 10 nano-volts.  That’s 10 one-
billionths of a volt!  Transistors and resistors produce noise in this range 
just by having electrons moving around due to heat.  Even if the converters 
could be perfectly designed to read these levels, the low noise requirements 
of the surrounding circuitry such as power supplies and amplifiers would be 
so stringent that they would either be impossible or too expensive to build. 
 
In answering the second question, consider the fact that music is often 
compressed or amplified after it is recorded, and that some headroom is 

 

Summary of Contents for Mona

Page 1: ...1 MONA Owner s Manual Version 1 1 for PC Mona is designed and manufactured in the U S by Echo Corporation ...

Page 2: ...e operated only from the type of power source indicated in this documentation or on Mona If you are unsure about the type of power at your location contact your local power company 8 Grounding Precautions should be taken so that the grounding capabilities of the Mona unit are not undermined This equipment is provided with a cord having an equipment grounding conductor and grounding plug This plug ...

Page 3: ...ice personnel 11 Damage Requiring Service Unplug this unit and refer it to a qualified service technician when any of the following occur a Objects have fallen or liquid has spilled into the unit b The product has been exposed to rain or water c The product does not operate normally or when a marked change in performance is noticed d The product has been dropped or damaged in any way ...

Page 4: ...ation at 805 684 4593 9AM to 5PM Monday through Friday Pacific Time If necessary you will be given a return authorization number Products returned without an RA number will be refused Echo may at its option require proof of the original date of purchase in the form of a dated copy of the original authorized dealer s invoice or sales receipt Pack the product in its original shipping carton and atta...

Page 5: ...or Controls 25 Output Controls 27 Adjusting Record and Playback Levels 27 Setting Clock Sources and Destinations 28 Synchronizing Multiple Devices 28 Digital Mode Switch 31 View ADAT Ctrls 31 The File Menu 32 The Preferences Page 33 Digital I O Selecting the S PDIF Output Format 34 Digital I O Dither Input 34 General Sync Wave Devices 35 General External Box Warning 35 Sample Rate Lock 36 Addition...

Page 6: ...mance 43 Contacting Customer Service 45 Appendix A The Echo Reporter Software 46 Appendix B General Troubleshooting Guide 53 Appendix C Resolving Interrupt Conflicts 57 Appendix D DirectSound FAQ 63 Appendix E Multi client audio FAQ 65 Appendix F Audio Software FAQ 68 Appendix G An Introduction to Digital Recording 72 Appendix H Specifications 80 Index 82 ...

Page 7: ...Software s Cool Edit Pro Special Edition multitrack recording and editing software and demo versions of digital audio recording editing and processing software from a variety of manufacturers The Mona owner s manual Four adhesive backed rubber feet and four mounting screws with collars System Requirements In order to use Mona you ll need the following An IBM PC or compatible computer with PCI arch...

Page 8: ... area or Screen area Inside the box is a slider that allows you to select different resolutions for your monitor You should set the resolution to at least 800x600 and click the Apply button At this point Windows will display a dialog box that will either ask you to restart windows or will merely tell you it is about to resize your desktop Click the OK button Windows will now resize your desktop ei...

Page 9: ... down arrow to the right of the combo box and select the No Sounds option Then click on the Ok button Installing the Mona Hardware Once you have verified that there are no problems with your system it is time to install Mona into your computer IMPORTANT Unplug your computer and detach all peripherals before proceeding with the following steps 1 Remove your computer s cover This operation differs f...

Page 10: ...t in the card being damaged 5 Use the screw removed earlier from the protective backplate to attach the metal bracket at the back of the Mona card to the computer s rear panel 6 OPTIONAL If you don t have a Darla24 or Gina24 you can skip this step If you have a Darla24 or Gina24 this would be a good time to attach an Esync cable to the Mona PCI card Esync is a proprietary form of super clock that ...

Page 11: ...addition Mona provides word clock sync stereo S PDIF digital input and output via coaxial RCA or optical connectors and eight channels of ADAT optical I O The analog and digital inputs and outputs on Mona are simultaneously active except that the digital mode must be set to either S PDIF or ADAT The S PDIF and ADAT I O cannot be used simultaneously This allows you to record up to 12 channels of au...

Page 12: ... or unbalanced signals via or XLR connectors Since Mona has built in preamps you can just plug your microphone or guitar cable right into any of Mona s analog inputs No external preamp or mixer is needed Mona s universal inputs can be thought of as three inputs in one a microphone input a line input and a guitar input Mona s Mic Preamp Input XLR Impedance 1 5K Trim 20 60 dB To use a microphone wit...

Page 13: ...ipment or guitars plugged in using connectors Mona s Line Input 1 4 TRS Impedance 10K Trim 0 40 dB When a connector is plugged into Mona s universal input jack the microphone preamp is disconnected and a line input amplifier is inserted in its place If the guitar switch is out the line input provides a balanced connection for TRS plugs and the trim knob has a range of 0 to 40 dB The input impedanc...

Page 14: ...ront panel The red bar at the top will light anytime the input signal is greater than 3 dB or within 3 dB of clipping The three yellow bars each represent a range of 3 dB and the green bars each represent a range of 6 dB It is a good idea to adjust the input trim knob so that your loudest recorded signal lights up some of the yellow bars but not the red If the signal level ever exceeds 0 dB the si...

Page 15: ...s The Computer Connector Next to the analog inputs and outputs is a connector labeled COMPUTER This connector is known as a DB 9 and is similar to the serial port on a PC It is the point at which the audio interface connects to the Mona PCI card inside your computer A cable was supplied with your Mona for this purpose This custom made cable is manufactured to certain specifications and if necessar...

Page 16: ...f digital signal at a time You must choose either ADAT optical or S PDIF optical or RCA you cannot use both simultaneously The Digital Mode Switch can be found in the Mona Echo Console For more information see the appropriate section in this manual under the heading The Echo Console S PDIF Next to the ADAT connectors is a pair of connectors labeled S PDIF IN and OUT These S PDIF connectors are use...

Page 17: ... you to synchronize one Mona to another Mona Layla or Layla24 or to other digital audio devices The word clock I O uses a BNC connector As with the S PDIF I O a shielded 75 ohm RG 59 coaxial video cable should be used BNC connectors are widely used in the electronics industry for both video and computer networking However computer networks use 50 ohm RG 58 coaxial cables and not the 75 ohm RG 59 c...

Page 18: ...From Disk window to appear In the field labeled Copy manufacturer s files from enter the path D depending on your system configuration your CD ROM drive may use a letter other than D Click on OK to complete the installation Now skip over the next two paragraphs If you are using Windows 95 OSR2 After you have inserted the Mona CD ROM disc and clicked next you ll see the message Windows found the fo...

Page 19: ... for the best driver for your device Recommended Click on the Next button and a dialog will appear with several check boxes indicating places where Windows will look Since you are installing from your CD ROM drive click on the appropriate box Be sure all other boxes are unchecked Click on the Next button and Windows will locate the drivers on the install disk and show you the Copying Files window ...

Page 20: ...ine labeled Sound Video and Game Controllers Double clicking on the to the left of the line s associated icon should reveal the line Mona by Echo double click on that line If everything is in working order a message should now appear on your screen that matches the picture below In the center of the Mona Properties window will be a section called Device Status Look for a message that reads This de...

Page 21: ...udio input and output devices that are available In the Control Panel window locate the Multimedia icon and double click on it This will bring the multimedia Properties window into view Select the Audio tab to see a list of available playback and recording devices in the Preferred Device fields You can view the Mona input and output devices in the Multimedia Properties Audio window ...

Page 22: ...og Record Mona S PDIF Record Mona 1 2 ADAT Record Mona 3 4 ADAT Record Mona 5 6 ADAT Record Mona 7 8 ADAT Record You ll find these same input and output options available when using your audio record editing software with the devices assignable on a per track basis See your software owner s manual for details on how to make these device assignments Instructions for making these assignments in Cool...

Page 23: ... controls to a single easy to use location From the console you can control the output levels select synchronization clocks select the digital mode and adjust input monitoring The Echo Console software was automatically installed at the same time that you installed the Mona drivers for Windows 95 98 If installation was successful you should see a capital letter M in your Windows 95 98 taskbar typi...

Page 24: ...ed into a box that contains selection buttons faders and other controls and displays as determined by the function Console Controls Let s take a look at the control surface The input control area is located in the upper left portion of the console surface Although some other Echo product consoles have controls here the Mona input trim controls are located on the Mona rack mount box itself For each...

Page 25: ...intain their relative placement with regard to each other Below each fader is its corresponding pan control In the default pan positions see example below the signal from input 1 left will be monitored by output 1 left and the signal from input 2 right will be monitored by output 2 right Moving a pan control will determine how much of the input signal is sent to each output channel in the selected...

Page 26: ...to display the currently selected levels at which inputs 1 2 are being monitored at outputs 1 2 Clicking on the button labeled 3 would cause the control box to display the currently selected levels at which inputs 1 2 were being monitored at outputs 3 4 You can move through the remaining buttons setting the level at which inputs 1 2 are monitored at each of the three output pairs as well as the S ...

Page 27: ...an be reset to default by pressing the Ctrl button and left clicking on the fader Adjusting Record and Playback Levels Mona s output volume adjustments are made in the digital domain When you lower a volume slider you are actually decreasing the number of available bits thereby taking away from the potential dynamic range of the system To avoid this we suggest that whenever possible you leave the ...

Page 28: ...gned to work alongside other audio equipment If you are planning on using Mona with other audio equipment please note the following The Mona Windows drivers included in this package support multiple Monas within the same system In addition your new Mona will operate alongside Layla Layla24 Gina Gina24 Darla and Darla24 Mona can also peacefully coexist with audio equipment from other manufacturers ...

Page 29: ...tream When recording from an S PDIF source whether via optical or RCA cables Mona will utilize the synchronization clock that is embedded in the S PDIF while it decodes the bitstream Note When recording from a S PDIF port you must select S PDIF as the input clock For greater flexibility this is not done automatically If you find that your S PDIF recordings contain pops or skips be sure that you ha...

Page 30: ...om a synchronization standpoint Let s start simple Suppose that Mona is the only audio device used in your system Since you have no other devices to synchronize with simply select Internal for Mona s input clock Mona will then use its own clock to control its operation Now a little more complicated set up You have two Monas connected Simply set Mona 1 to Internal for its input clock Now connect th...

Page 31: ...de is selected This is because ADAT does not support sample rates higher than 48kHz View ADAT Ctrls While you are in the ADAT digital mode you can view the Console ADAT controls at any time by checking the View ADAT Ctrls checkbox As seen below these controls are the same as the analog input monitoring and output controls The only exception is the lack of controls for the ADAT outputs If you want ...

Page 32: ...The Preferences option brings up the Console Preferences Page window We ll get to that window shortly but first let s go on to the rest of the File menu options The second option under the File menu is Hide which closes the Console window You can reopen the Console by clicking on the M in the bottom left of the Windows taskbar The third option under the File menu is Exit which closes the current i...

Page 33: ...elow under Additional Configuration Settings It will also come back when you restart Windows The Preferences Page The Mona Echo Console Preferences Page contains controls in three different categories Digital I O General and Sample Rate Lock After making any changes you should always press OK If you want to reset all of the settings for this page then press the Set Defaults button The Preferences ...

Page 34: ...indow that appears you ll see a pair of check boxes in an area labeled S PDIF Out Format one box is labeled Consumer and the other Professional Select the appropriate format for your DAT if you don t know which one to use and are having difficulties simply try the one that is not currently checked Important note Mona never transmits the SCMS bit regardless of which format is selected Digital I O D...

Page 35: ... tries to access Mona and the box is off you will get a message that gives you three options OK Retry or Ignore Pressing OK just means that you acknowledge the message The application will be told that Mona is not available The only real problem here is that if you leave your Mona box off when you start your PC Windows will itself repeatedly try to access the hardware so you get bombarded with the...

Page 36: ... all sample rate change requests from applications will be ignored and the card will remain at that sample rate no matter what This feature is most useful in Multi client audio mode see below Suppose you have locked the sample rate to 44100 If you are recording a project at 44100 and another sound tries to play at say 22050 the sample rate won t change Sample rate locking only applies while Mona i...

Page 37: ...window locate the icon for System and double click on it Click on the tab titled Device Manager Now locate the line titled Sound video and game controllers Finally locate the line titled Mona by Echo and double click This will bring up the Mona by Echo Properties window which we saw briefly in the Installing the Mona Software Drivers section of this manual We have previously seen the General scree...

Page 38: ...d In the Mona by Echo Properties window that appears you ll see a checkbox labeled Monitor during playback Uncheck the box to disable input monitoring during playback recheck it to enable input monitoring during playback The Monitoring controls are found in the Echo Console see above SAW compatibility mode When using Mona with earlier versions of the Software Audio Workshop SAW program from Innova...

Page 39: ...both Cubase VST multitrack audio and Reality software synthesizer You can now set Cubase VST to play out through outputs 1 through 4 and set Reality to play out through outputs 5 and 6 The default setting for Multi client audio is disabled Although this feature is very useful it can also be difficult to use properly We highly recommend that you read the appendix entitled Multi client audio FAQ fou...

Page 40: ... The second checkbox is labeled Lock DirectSound format This allows you to force the Mona DirectSound driver to playback files at a certain sample rate and bit depth It also allows you to lock it to stereo or mono This setting only applies if you are using software that uses multiple DirectSound outputs simultaneously such as the applications offered by Stage Research For this reason it defaults a...

Page 41: ...D ROM drive On the CD ROM is a folder called Syntrillium double click on this directory to open it Now locate the file in the Syntrillium directory called SETUP Select this program and run it The SETUP program will copy all of the necessary files to your hard drive It will also add a program group called Cool Edit Pro Special Edition to the Program listings available from the Start button menu Coo...

Page 42: ...on you ll see a list of Preferred Multitrack Devices In the Playback fields assign Mona analog playback devices 1 2 3 4 and 5 6 into the 1st 2nd and 3rd fields respectively Assign the S PDIF playback device into the 4th field and assign Mona ADAT playback devices 1 2 3 4 5 6 and 7 8 into the 5th 6th 7th and 8th fields respectively In the Record fields assign Mona Analog Record devices 1 2 and 3 4 ...

Page 43: ...eems reasonably complete the meter is beyond of the way filled try reducing the Playback Buffer Size and raising the Background Mixing Priority Level higher values reduce the priority level Conversely if you notice dropouts and see that the Mix Gauge is hovering around the bottom empty try increasing the Playback Buffer Size and lowering the Background Mixing Priority Level The goal in adjusting t...

Page 44: ...channel pair This additional mixing demands more processing power from your computer This could result in longer mix times and possible skipping during playback If your system is performing sluggishly you can temporarily assign all tracks to a single channel pair while monitoring to speed things up When doing so it is recommended that you check 32 bit Pre mixes mode in the Options Settings Multitr...

Page 45: ...get the help that you need is by giving us plenty of detailed information about your computer system your audio software and the problem you are having We do ask you to please read through this manual and the support area of our website before contacting us You may find an answer to your problem using the Appendices in the Mona owner s manual and or Cool Edit Pro s on screen help Thank you for buy...

Page 46: ...rds with an Intel chipset Your system may or may not work with other CPUs or chipsets Be sure to run the Reporter before attempting to install Mona as it can help you avoid installation problems down the road To run the Reporter simply double click on the Install Reporter icon in the Reporter directory of the Mona CD ROM This will install the program onto your hard disk The Reporter will then show...

Page 47: ...it resolution Times are expressed in Hours Minutes Seconds Change the Number of Tracks field to 2 and you ll see the maximum length available for a stereo track Change the field to 8 and you ll see the maximum length you ll have for an eight track opus Naturally these multitrack readouts presume uninterrupted linear tracks Your music is likely to contain numerous snippets of data e g the backgroun...

Page 48: ...multaneous Tracks heading At the basic level these two fields show you how many simultaneous tracks of playback and recording your system will support For example if the readout was 15 for the Playback field and 8 for the Record field that means your system is capable of playing back 15 tracks while simultaneously recording 8 tracks Note however that the Playback and Record fields are interrelated...

Page 49: ...ust because the Reporter tells you your system seems a bit on the weak side Use your audio application in real world conditions then make the determination if your system can keep up with your needs Conversely if the Reporter tells you things look really bad don t waste your time trying to do any serious work If your hard disk is too slow or too small you ll save yourself a lot of frustration by u...

Page 50: ...50 The Summary screen tells you if your system can support multitrack audio recording as well as alerting you to potential problems ...

Page 51: ...tional PCI Bios Upgrade to a computer with PCI version 2 1 or higher The Echo line of sound cards requires PCI version 2 1 or later To alleviate this problem please purchase a PCI system version 2 1 or later Your computer has PCI but it is version 2 0 or earlier Upgrade to PCI version 2 1 or higher The Echo Reporter has determined that your system has no free interrupts The Echo line of sound card...

Page 52: ...ther solution is to add a faster hard disk to your system The Echo Reporter has found that your system may not be equipped with a Pentium or faster processor The algorithm we are using for processor detection is known to return faulty values for many of the AMD Cyrix and other non Intel chips so be sure to double check this warning against processor identification that your machine displays each t...

Page 53: ...track of installed devices not only by peripheral type but also by physical location In moving a card from one slot to another Windows will no longer recognize the card as one for which a driver is installed You must re install the driver for the card that was moved Problem You installed multiple Monas and you get several error messages telling you that Windows is unable to open the Mixer Library ...

Page 54: ...ch go to the Mona Echo Console Select Preferences under the File menu In the window that appears you ll see a pair of check boxes in an area labeled S PDIF Out Format one box is labeled Consumer and the other Professional Select the appropriate format for your DAT if you don t know which one to use simply select the one that is not currently checked Now click the OK button and again try recording ...

Page 55: ... Problem On Windows startup you hear a high pitched squealing sound or your S PDIF or ADAT signal has gone crazy Solution Reset the sample rate of Mona Windows always sets the sample rate to 11kHz at startup Because neither S PDIF nor ADAT support this rate you will have problems syncing until you reset Mona s sample rate to one within spec like 44 1 or 48kHZ You can do this by playing a wave file...

Page 56: ...is setting from the Echo Console When the Digital Mode is set to ADAT you are limited to the sample rates that are within the ADAT spec such as 44 1 and 48kHz Please note that you can only record above 48 kHz through the analog I O We will add support for recording through S PDIF at 88 2 and 96 kHz in a future driver release ...

Page 57: ...nflicts Hopefully we ll be able to help you solve your problem without too much trouble What is an Interrupt A computer has two ways of telling when a device such as an audio card is ready to exchange data with a program One way is to have the computer periodically ask or poll the device to see if it s ready to transfer new data Since it is important to do the transfer as soon as it is ready the p...

Page 58: ...ith an ISA card Plug and Play and Interrupts When your computer first starts up the BIOS will check each connector slot to see if a Plug and Play card is installed Each Plug and Play card has built into it a list of what resources it requires including how many interrupts it needs and which ones it can use The BIOS will then configure each card and if needed assign an appropriate interrupt It does...

Page 59: ... the next time you try to use it or Mona neither device will function properly Resolving Interrupt Conflicts Although there is no way to automatically detect legacy interrupts Windows 95 98 and some BIOS s allow you to reserve specific interrupts for legacy use Once an interrupt is reserved it will not be assigned by Plug and Play to another card Or if you have a PCI card that doesn t like to shar...

Page 60: ...ll be the one that needs to be dealt with Once the offending card has been identified you have a few different options One option is to simply remove the card from your system However you ve likely got the card in there for a reason so unless it s an old sound card you don t care about keeping you ll probably want to use an approach to remedying the problem that allows the card to remain in the sy...

Page 61: ...ases this works just as well as reserving the IRQ in the BIOS However you may still have problems if you boot up an older version of DOS from a floppy where Windows 95 98 can t do its Plug and Play magic To reserve an IRQ within Windows 95 98 do the following 1 Click on the Start button and select Control Panel under the Settings option 2 Double click on the icon labeled System 3 Select the tab la...

Page 62: ... allow you to change the IRQ setting at this point while others will give you a message saying This resource setting cannot be modified If you are allowed to change the IRQ a window will appear that lets you choose from several different values Scroll through the different values until you find one that says No devices are conflicting Choose that one and keep selecting OK until Device Manager is c...

Page 63: ...bit samples Also our DirectSound driver is only for output that is you cannot record via DirectSound Q Do I need anything special to take advantage of DirectSound You need to download the latest version of DirectX from www microsoft com directx and install it Older versions of DirectX will probably work but we have only tested with DirectX 6 1 and 7 If you are using an application that uses multip...

Page 64: ...air of female RCA to male quarter inch adapters Q What s the story with the DirectSound format lock This setting only applies if you are using software that uses multiple DirectSound outputs simultaneously such as the applications offered by Stage Research It appears that DirectX 6 1 and 7 get confused when they see multiple DirectSound outputs The first output pair gets set up correctly but the r...

Page 65: ... the various interfaces are multi client You could have an ASIO application a wave application and a DirectSound application all running at the same time It s very flexible If you want to use multi client audio you need to enable it in the main driver properties page See the section entitled Additional Configuration Settings in this manual Multi client audio can be difficult to use depending on wh...

Page 66: ...est guitar solo of your life and someone clicks on something on the screen The 22 kHz system sound will play out of an unused output and drop the sample rate of the whole system to 22 ruining your take If you really want system sounds go buy a 30 cheapo sound card and play them through that Set the preferred device in the Multimedia control panel to the cheapo sound card and check Use preferred de...

Page 67: ...somewhat harder to get going in multi client mode For more information please refer to the Cubase VST section of the Audio Software FAQ in this manual Q Can I run a Direct Sound program an ASIO program and a wave program all at the same time Sure If you don t understand the question don t worry about it Q What s the downside to all this The main downside is that your computer may very well have a ...

Page 68: ...start Cubase If you change digital modes while Cubase is running it will confuse the program and you will need to close it and restart Q Wow can I really use a buffer size of 128 samples in Cubase You re welcome to try The smallest buffer size we have been able to use reliably is 1024 samples on a Pentium III 450 with 128 MB of RAM Buffer sizes of 1024 or less should be considered experimental Q W...

Page 69: ...ext step depends on what other software you have installed Reality and Cubase VST If you want to use Reality with Cubase VST and our hardware run the Setup MME program again Set Reality as an active output Now before you run Cubase VST make sure you run Reality first Then make sure that Reality is not using outputs 1 and 2 of your card Cubase will always try to use outputs 1 and 2 If some other pr...

Page 70: ...ant to use both Gigasampler and Reality you d better have a really good computer If you do just make sure you start both of them before VST Retro AS 1 and Cubase VST Unfortunately we haven t been able to get Retro AS 1 to work with Cubase at the same time This is mainly because we couldn t find a way to tell Retro AS 1 to use any outputs other than 1 and 2 Even if you start Retro first both Retro ...

Page 71: ... driver update will be required to use Gigasampler with our new products Q Once I get the update is there anything else I should know about Yes Gigasampler will not work if you have DirectSound enabled You will need to go into the DirectSound property page and disable DirectSound If you have more than one of our cards you need to disable DirectSound for each card Reaktor Q I m a Reaktor user Anyth...

Page 72: ...le rate On playback the process happens in reverse The series of numbers is played back through a digital to analog converter or DAC which converts the numbers back into an analog signal This signal can then be sent to an amplifier and speakers for listening In computers binary numbers are used to store the values that make up the samples Only two characters 1 and 0 are used The value of a charact...

Page 73: ...an be represented by any of over 16 million possible values The output DACs are also 24 bit again over 16 million values are possible The S PDIF inputs and outputs also support signals with up to 24 bit resolution Mona processes signals internally with 24 bit resolution to insure that there is no degradation to the audio signal as it is processed through the system The number of bits available als...

Page 74: ...te is lower than the frequency you are trying to record entire cycles of the waveform will be missed and the result will not resemble the proper waveform When the sample rate is too low the resulting sound has diminished high frequency content Figure C Increased sample rates yield a more accurate reproduction of the source signal By the way the circuits that generate the sample rate must be exceed...

Page 75: ...abbreviated as dB This is a logarithmic scale where each doubling of signal level is represented by an increase of 6 dB Therefore a signal of 6 dB is twice as big as a 0 dB signal and a signal of 12 dB is four times as big as a 0 dB signal Since digital audio signals are represented by binary data each bit of audio information represents 6 dB A 16 bit number can represent a total range of 96 dB an...

Page 76: ...level All other signal levels are lower and are expressed as negative decibels Most meters on digital equipment Mona included have 0 dB at the top and range downward from there A signal that is 30 dB below full scale would simply be referred to as a 30 dB signal Nominal Signal Levels and Headroom Today s equipment is generally referred to as 4 dBu equipment professional or 10 dBV equipment consume...

Page 77: ...world this is not the case and some of the common mode noise will still make it through although at a much reduced level How well an input amplifier rejects this common mode noise is called the common mode rejection ratio abbreviated as CMRR and is expressed in dB Balanced outputs typically drive the plus and minus components of a balanced signal in one of two ways A differentially balanced output...

Page 78: ...tem has a dynamic range of 96 dB Two questions immediately come to mind 1 Why does Mona only have a dynamic range of 115 to 116 dB 2 For mastering 16 bit CDs with a dynamic range of 96dB isn t anything more than 96dB just overkill First today s analog to digital converters typically produce a full scale input voltage with an input of 7 dBu If they were to have 144 dB of dynamic range they would ha...

Page 79: ...ust under full scale and no compressing or amplification was going to be applied after recording Any time recorded music is amplified so is the noise at the low end Mona has enough dynamic range to allow sufficient headroom and post processing to be applied while still keeping the noise either off the CD completely or down as far as possible ...

Page 80: ... 129dBV Input Impedence 1 5K Gain Adjustment 20 60 dB Line Input Level balanced TRS Input Impedence 10K Gain Adjustment 0 40 dB Guitar Input unbalanced Input Impedence 107K Gain Adjustment 10 50 dB Analog Outputs x6 Frequency Response 10Hz 22kHz 0 25dB Dynamic Range 116dB A weighted THD n 0 002 20Hz 22kHz 4 dBu Outputs differentially balanced XLR Nominal Output Level 4dBu Maximum Output Level 22dB...

Page 81: ...onverters Six analog outputs both XLR RCA with high performance 24 bit 128x oversampling digital to analog converters S PDIF digital I O with up to 24 bit resolution ADAT optical digital I O Trim control and level meter for each input Headphone output with volume control On board 24 bit Motorola 56301 DSP 80 MIPS 24 bit data resolution maintained throughout entire signal path Multiple sample rates...

Page 82: ...ce 45 contents 7 Cool Edit Pro installation 41 Cubase 68 D decibels 75 digital 31 75 digital recording 72 digital to analog converter 72 DirectSound 40 63 dither 34 driver installation 18 dynamic range 79 E Echo Console 23 Echo Console controls 24 Echo Reporter 7 46 51 52 75 Esync 30 G Gigasampler 69 71 H hardware installation 9 I input controls 24 interface cable 7 interrupt conflicts 53 57 58 59...

Page 83: ...REPORTER program errors 51 resolving interrupt conflicts 57 Retro 70 S S PDIF 29 55 68 S PDIF cabling 11 17 S PDIF output format 34 S PDIF output setting 34 54 S PDIF recording 53 S PDIF resolution 73 sample rate 72 74 sample size 73 SAW compatibility mode 38 SCMS copy protection 34 54 selecting a slot 9 settings 37 software Installation 18 specifications 81 static electricity discharging 10 summa...

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