Hi psm,
I'm now going to (very likely) display my lack of knowledge when it
comes to audio engineering terms. (Well they do make life very hard
by surrounding the whole arena with an aura of mystical terms
like 'dBm', 'dBV', 'dBv', 'dBu', 'VU' and 'line level' etc., and you
never, never, ever see these things defined with the appropriate
mathematical formula given - you have to be 'in the know' (nudge-
nudge, wink-wink). I have a book which _attempts_ to explain, but as
always, shies away from giving all the maths - if anyone knows of a
good web resource, to save me working it out from scratch, then I'd
love to know it!). Here goes:

> symmetrical early on due to noise and started using a high quality

impedence

> transformer (reamp box) in front of the assym input instead, so the

+4db signal

> from the console gets knocked down to instrument level. that helps

alot.

Why do you need to step the signal down at all Just how big actually
is it If by '+4db' you mean '4dBm', then this equates to a couple of
volts at most, which you could safely stick straight into the 119
asymmetric input, and thus save having to turn the gain up so much

> also, seems that by the time i amplify the signal enough to get a

healthy

> envelope signal from the a119 the audio on output is really dull.

maybe

> there's an adjustment for making the envelope follower more

sensitive..( )

Yes, its called the gain control! It seems to me that making the
signal big enough to drive the envelope circuitry is its main
purpose! The envelope is developed by precision full-wave rectifying
the signal, then low pass filtering - by the sound of it, what you
would ideally want is a second gain stage in front of this so that
the signal is bumped up high enough for the envelope stage
independently of the audio out.

Tim