So, a friend got the motu M2 2x2 to allow him to switch between 2 sources (his mac mini and pc) while only using 1 headphone.
From his mac mini he is running a 1/8in TRS to 1/4in TS splitter cable, with the TS ends in the L and R mic/line/guitar combination ports on the front of the m2.
However, he is getting a lot of static from this, even when the mac mini source is powered off.
Here is one of two cable he’s tried:
What could be the issue?
Thanks.
Honestly I don’t know why he would do something like this, so he’s using the internal dac of the motu and also trying to use the analog output of another pc by running it into a line in on the motu? A much more reasonable setup here would just be to grab a jds atom and a dac like the topping e30 which you could run usb to the pc and most of the mac minis have a mini toslink inside the headphone jack so you run optical to the e30. So it would be pc (via usb) and the mac mini (via toslink) running into the e30 with a headphone amp like the atom, and you would just change sources on the e30 for what pc you want to listen to. If he wants to listen to both at the same time, then a different setup would be needed
That noise he’s most likely getting is a ground loop which is common when you connect things like this, but you really shouldn’t be doing it this way in the first place with the motu m2 if I’m understanding the situation correctly
We wanted to find the cheapest way to do dual inputs so i thought of the m2 since it is a dac-amp combo.
It also should be mentioned that he used a stereo cable from the mac mini into one of the analog inputs and it worked fine with no static, but then it needed to be in mono mode.
If all you needed to do was be able to have 2 computers connected and choose between them for which one to listen to, a setup with a topping e30 and l30 (since why not stack) would be all you would need as long as the mac mini had a toslink out, would be around 250 ish, this would def sound better than the m2 in the way you are using it
If you have to be able to hear both pc’s audio at the same time that’s going to be a bit more complex and is going to require the use of a mixer most likely. Also having one computer be optical will most likely isolate any potential ground loops
While the m2 technically is a dac amp, it is mainly a microphone interface made to record signal from a microphone or instruments into a pc, not really what you want to just use as a dac amp if you don’t have to and is also not made to be used that way
If you really needed to go cheaper you could forgo the dac entirely but I’ll ignore that option for now, all it would be is a jds atom and you just run 3.5mm to 3.5mm for one input and 3.5mm to rca for the other input, but then you rely on the motherboard audio for each device so you loose sound quality compared to the setup above and have a higher potential for ground loops
