[LAU] Any DI boxes that do this?

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

On 08/26/2012 02:24 AM, david wrote:
> Thanks, Simon and Harry. I sent the message off, then a while later
> thought, "Bet I'll just have to combine the stereo to a mono and put
> that into a standard DI."
>
> I'd love to use 2 XLRs, but we don't have enough channels on our snake
> anymore (combination of some added singers and one non-working line in
> the snake).

One way that comes to mind is to convert the stereo signal to digital 
and send the digital signal over the balanced pair.  This might be an 
overly-complex approach -- so it depends on how much you /really/ want 
to preserve the stereo signal.  :-)

One chain I can think of is:

Analog[Stereo] --> S/PDIF(unbalanced) --> AES(balanced XLR)
     --> S/PDIF(unbalanced) --> Analog[Stereo]

There's several $40 devices out ther for the analog/spdif conversion. 
The spdif to AES conversion could probably be done with a couple of Hosa 
CDL-313 boxes (about $80).  (But I'm new to SPDIF and AES so I might be 
missing something.)

A cheaper way that *might* work to send S/PDIF over XLR is to run the 
S/PDIF signal through a couple DI's.  Since the S/PDIF signal is pretty 
resistant to noise -- I think this is pretty likely to work.

-gabriel