External Input

[awebster]

Hi, I'm just wondering if there's anyway to plug an mp3 player into the external input of the microbrute and then jam along with it? (so the music keeps coming through when notes aren't being played)

Thanks

[darkflow]

Theres a few ways to do this I've found.

1. Get a headphone splitter, plug the male end into the Microbrute, leaving you 2 females. Plug headphones into one female, plug mp3 player via aux cable into other female. Voila, sound is combined. Not obvious at first but a splitter does work this way too.
http://www.amazon.com/BELKIN-F8V234-WHT-APL-Belkin-Headphone-Splitter/dp/B0000UV2AW

2. Use a mixer

3. I found this out by accident. This may not be advisable by Arturia and would like to hear their response to it: Use an aux cable to connect your mp3 player to a 1/8" female-1/4"male adapter and plug into the Line out of the Microbrute. This channels the audio into headphone port. Like I said, this may not be advisable, but it works.
http://www.amazon.com/AudioAdapt-Quality-Headphone-Adapter-Stereo/dp/B003VGUGBS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1390761501&sr=8-4&keywords=1%2F4+to+1%2F8

!!!EDIT: it appears my solutions 1 and 3 are not advisable. Based on this
http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/linesum.html
it is not recommended to combine 2 line level sources using a splitter, without resistors in place. Would still like to hear back from Arturia about this though.

[Bruno@arturia]

The right way to do it is to use a mixer.
Indeed summing two signals by bypassing them together is not recommended.

[awebster]

Thanks for the replies. I was hoping there'd be a crude way to it when travelling without having to bring a mixer along, but I guess not.

Out of interest, could this be enabled in the editor at a later date or is there a reason why it can't be done? I wouldn't have thought it would be particularly difficult (my cheap monotron can can do it, for example).

Thanks

[Bruno@arturia]

you can still set your MP3 in mono mode or try to use the balance setting?
I honestly didn't thought about summing both channels at the input, but that's a smart idea, I will do it next time. But for this one it's too late, it is on the hardware

[awebster]

you can still set your MP3 in mono mode or try to use the balance setting?
I honestly didn't thought about summing both channels at the input, but that's a smart idea, I will do it next time. But for this one it's too late, it is on the hardware

That sounds great, thanks. There's no rush!