Headphone output as a line out?

bunq · 2014-09-08T22:35:19.000Z

Hello,
Do you know if the headphone output can be used as a line out like a mirror of the main outputs?
Or are there some differences of dynamic range, etc. ?
Thank you

dimi3 · 2014-09-09T01:35:46.000Z

I believe it is the same output.

R7 · 2014-09-09T05:54:32.000Z

The differences would be the impedance of the output and balanced vs unbalanced signals. The main outs are 440 ohms balanced and the headphone outs are 55 ohms unbalanced.

In general, when running a headphone out into a line in it should sound fine but the level might be slightly lower than the same signal coming out of the line outs (as far as I know) and you might run into more distortion and noise. Balanced cables also are less prone to distortion, especially over longer cable lengths, which you lose with the headphone out since it’s unbalanced The individual outs on the Rytm are also unbalanced and that’s not a big deal really. The outputs on Elektron gear seem to be very high quality and you shouldn’t have any issues. You could always run a couple of main vs headphone tests and look at a spectrograph to see if there’s any added noise but it should work ok.

bunq · 2014-09-09T07:01:24.000Z

Thank you for these answers, I did a test recording between main outs vs headphone outs at various levels and didn’t notice differences.
Cheers