If you’ve spent time in a recording studio, chances are you’ve stumbled across the Radial JDI as it is a commonly used DI box.

If you want the driest sound possible, then you could make an argument that the DI box fails if it provides coloration. That said, I would not say that Keith’s test was a failure at all. In fact, the main selling point of the Radial JDI is the use of the Jensen transformer to provide analog saturation to the signal vs. clipping. It just depends on how you like to work with your audio.

I’ve used a lot of different home recording interfaces and you often get a weak signal running the instrument into the box. I’ve tried using cheap passive DI boxes, and noticed no change. That said, my current interface is a Focusrite Saffire, and the signal is much better i.e. less noise, higher gain. I will be picking up a JDI radial passive DI tonight or this weekend and can post A/B testing results.

Man, I don’t want to sound as if I’m an English nut, but your sentence and I quote, “I’ve been a person for roughly 40 years who has known many people who share Jon’s miscommunication habits.”, has a slight flaw in the sentence structure.

I may be wrong, and correct me if I am, but maybe if written this way, “I’ve been a person for roughly 40 years, and have known many people who share Jon’s miscommunication habits.”

Just taking one for the team here.

steve

P.S. IMHO, I think poster David hit the nail on the head when he mentioned that the ‘colour’ we hear in the sound when using DIs is really just the actual sound of the instrument coming through, especially with the more expensive units.

Jim, I think it would be more accurate to say that your ideal DI strives not to affect the tone. I have about 8 different options for DI in my studio and they all sound different. This is part of my creative pallet at a producer-engineer. As a matter of fact the one I use the most (an A Designs REDDI) gets used because it colors the sound the most in a beautiful way

Everything that affects the level or impedance of an audio signal will change its tone. Sometimes almost unnoticeable and other times quite dramatically. This is why the world has such a large range of pres, DIs Line Amps…..

There’s some confusion by some well meaning people about communication. Jon’s post is an example of this. Fortunately, though this is just a quick post, I have a suggestion handy to drop in here. His statements about “confussion” about impedance can be very confusing for someone actually wanting to learn something. I’ve been a person for roughly 40 years who has known many people who share Jon’s miscommunication habits. It’s SO easy to debunk someone and then not provide a positive solution.

So Jon, unless you just wanted to come off like a debunking know-it-all, in the future, a helpful post would actually take the 5 minutes it takes to dig up a “training link” or other resource (for example, for DI units: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DI_unit), and drop that into the correction, instead of just making poster Steve look bad, and then disingenuously saying, “Sorry Steve.” Failing to do so is not helpful.

Hope this helps!

Sorry Steve.