Well, it finally happened to me. After warning other people for years to use a Direct Box when connecting to a sound system, what did I do, connected an IPad to a mixer with an adaptor from 1/8th stereo to 2 channels of Balanced outs. Then boom, the IPad headphone output was fried. How? The mixer had global Phantom power on all of the channels and because I went into the balanced inputs rather than line level 1/4 inch inputs, the voltage of the phantom power fried the IPad.
When I brought my IPad in for repairs, fortunately it was just the headset circuit that was damaged. The owner of the repair store said that he had seen this problem before with other IPads, computers, portable CD players and cell phones. With one person, their IPad was so damaged that the IPad had to have the main board repaired too. Ouch.
Fortunately, there are a few direct boxes you can use that are purpose made for connecting from consumer to pro audio equipment. What you want is a direct box that will give you 1/8th stereo and RCA two channel input to two channel stereo outputs via XLR’s. Some model have a switch for stereo or mono outputs. Pad switches and ground lifts are a must as well.
On this project we were firing up the speaker system for the first time. I needed stereo output and we used an older mixer that was in storage. We hooked up to two channel and we were outputting to stereo (even though this will be a mono system.) OK, I wanted to impress the people who were in the room at the time. The demo and initial speaker setup was a great success but I happened to remove the connections from the mixer while the mixer was still on. Not sure if the unplugging or the circuit that was heated up so much that when it cooled, it came apart that signed the connection failure but the next time I turned on my IPad to hear something, it would not work.
Either way, whether you are using a PC, Laptop, Cell phone, IPad, IPod or any consumer product that has 1/8 or RCA outputs, get a proper Direct box. They range in price from $69 to $160. That is cheap insurance considering that fixing my IPad cost about $100.00 and 7 days to get the parts to repair it.
For sound quality and extra insurance, get DI boxes that have transformers on the input or output side.
Joseph De Buglio
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