Issues with a Behringer XENYX 302USB mixer

[Ramanujan]

Hi,
I have a few issues somewhere between my bass and my headphones. I'd like to use the Xenyx mixer as a kind of headphone amp.
But i'm not sure how to connect my bass&pedalboard to that thing and get a somewhat acceptable sound out of it:
My first try was just connecting the last effect (in my case that was a Ditto looper) to the instrument in of the mixer. That resulted in massive jumps in volume when activating the looper...
Next try: i put a boost pedal on unity gain at the end of my pedalboard. This sounds quite good. The volume issues with the looper disappear in this configuration
Ok, so my thought was that i maybe just need some buffer between my pedalboard and the mixer. So i ordered a MOOER Micro DI. Now i have new problems: When i connect the DI via xlr to the mixer, my low-end is lost. Almost no bass frequencies at all. It works better if i connect with an instrument cable instead of the xlr. Activating the speaker sim on the Mooer DI almost doubles the volume...

I guess all this can somehow be explained with impedance issues. But i really didn't expect this.
Is the cheap Behringer mixer the source of my problems?
Will i experience similar problems when i connect to a "real" mixer in a gig situation?

Any ideas?

Jens

 

[seamonkey]

Make sure the XLR outs on your pedals don't have a Low Cut switch on.
The XLR and 1/4" input on the Mic channel is really for MIC levels. You can play with the "Gain" to get something usable, but your line level out from your pedal board should go to the line in on the mixer. Still I'd expect it to work by playing with the Gain knob.
You should figure this out if you expect to hand a FOH Engineer a XLR to the board. Higher level boards will usually have a pad switch, but that's like turning down the gain.

 

[Ramanujan]

Maybe i found my issue:
My DI-Boxes (Mooer and i tried with the Sadowsky outboard pre) all have 600Ω output impedance. The Mic Pre input on the behringer has 2000Ω input impedance. This doesn't sound right (i think there is a rule of thumb that input should be at least 10x higher than the output impedance)
Maybe that's the explanation why my experiments with XLR all failed.
If the 1/4" jack on the mixer switches to some line level impedance, that would explain why using a direct connection without DI sounds better (unfortunately that's not mentioned in the documentation of the mixer)

But i have never heard of incompatibilities between DIs and mixers. So maybe i still mess something up...

 

[Sean Fairchild - MG]

Dear Ramanujan,

It's possible there may be some impedance mismatch issues, although with what you described - a 600 Ohm output impedance going into a 2k Ohm input, I would expect you'd lose high end if anything, not low end. The volume issues are odd, too. Are you sure you've read any pertinent documentation for the Xenyx mixer, and are connecting to it in the appropriate way? There should be manuals and/or Quick Start Guides listed on the product page for the mixer you have, under the Downloads tab.

If you're still having issues, feel free to contact our CARE department for more info and technical assistance at [email protected]. Thank you, and I hope you get it figured out soon!

Best regards,
Sean Fairchild
Specialist, Channel Marketing Prosumer Division
MUSIC Group
BEHRINGER