Nord User Forum

Hey everyone, I have a nord 2x that I always connected to my soundcard by having 2 dedicated TS (unbalanced) jack plugged from 2 OUT of the synth to 2 IN of my soundcard to benefit from the stereo it can do.

Will it do harm if I use a Y cable (2 TS jack to 1 TRS jack) to free a front input from my soundcard ? I ask this because Clavia warn users to only use TS (unbalanced) cable in the nord 2x. And if I do because it's safe, am I going to receive a stereo signal in my soundcard ? Thanks !

Hi, not sure want are you trying to achieve, NL2X has 2 outputs, if your soundcard (which one??? mentionining brand/model would help...) input on the back is still Mono and is a single one simply connect only OUT1 and you are fine, if you have 2 mono inputs on the back use also OUT2 just as you did so far with front inputs

But for sure do not use a "2 TS into 1 TRS"cable expecting to "mix" 2 outputs into a mono input this way, it won't work: if sound card input is TS mono one of the channels will be shorted to Shield, if it is TRS mono you will easily just create phase cancellations as one NL2X channel will go to + and the other to - of the balanced TRS input). The only case when such a cable would work is if you have a Stereo TRS input on the soundcard (like some Aux IN type of input on keyboards).

Hey ! Thanks for your answer.
My soundcard is a Scarlett Focusrite 18i8 2nd Gen with inputs that accept both TS and TRS jack !
Yeah I think those inputs are mono because they always take a pair of 2 channels to make the stereo signal in the mixing interface. Also in the rooting examples from the manual, all the stereo devices takes 2 inputs ports...

The TRS inputs on your Focusrite are balanced mono inputs (use both + and -, plus ground, hence TRS) which are also capable of accepting an unbalanced mono TS (+ and ground, only) input, each. You should connect them to one, and only one, output of your Nord, each.

Technical details:

NEVER connect two outputs to one input ! You can absolutely destroy the output side of the synth doing this (it is not guaranteed you _will_ destroy it, but the potential is there). This is a hard rule in audio. Y cables are only for splitting one output to two inputs, never the other way around.

At best if the input is a properly balanced and isolated TRS and the cable is wired optimally, you will get cancellation of the signal and hear very little (only the stereo difference between the channels, but not the common signal, which is mostly what you would want to hear instead). Obviously this best case is already bad, from the perspective of audio.

At worst, you can have a dead DAC or line driver chip (or even further damage) in your synth, needing expensive repair.

Note: in the case of some rare inputs (which your card does not have) which are stereo unbalanced TRS -- this is _very rare_ but it does exist -- you can use a stereo combiner cable to adapt dual-unbalanced-TS to single-unbalanced-TRS-stereo, but again this is an exceptionally rare case and you should only do this if you are absolutely certain you know the input is stereo AND you know the _exact_ pinout of the cable you are using is correct for the situation. If you are not familiar with cable pinouts and the exact nature of the input, do not ever do this.