Connecting phone to studio monitors

[jeannepanne]

Hey fellow Helix fans,

 

I'm sort of new to the studio monitors and searching for a solution.

I have my eyes of Yamaha HS 7's. I would move to connect my android phone aswell as my Helix to them

 

My phone would play backing tracks then.

 

How can I do this?

[rd2rk]

If you have an iPhone and a Helix Floor or Rack, use the camera kit to connect to the Helix USB port. That will be USB 1/2 and will play through the same Helix Outs that your monitors are connected through, without passing through the effects chain.

 

If it's an Android, the specific make/model will probably determine whether you can do it that way or not. You may need to (and this is actually the best way to use an iPhone too) get a small mixer, like a Behringer Xenyx 802 (around $50), take the headpnone out from your phone into one of the Line Input pairs on the mixer (1/8" Stereo to dual 1/4" Mono), and the Helix Outs into the other pair. Connect your speakers to the mixer.

 

There's another way, without a mixer, but it requires modifying every preset that you want to use. Connect the 1/8 to 1/4 Insert cable described above into a pair of RETURNS and add a pair of RETURN Blocks, one in a split, at the end of the signal chain, with the merge block panned hard left and hard right. PITA. Get the mixer. Easier level control/mixing too.

[DunedinDragon]

The easiest way is if you have your Helix connected via USB to you computer and the speakers connected to your Helix, just plug your android into any other USB port on the computer, make sure it's connected for file transfer, select the song frpm the file manager in Windows and play it.  The Helix should already be selected as the sound device. Probably easiest to control the playback volume for the music from the android on the phone itself.