Ron wrote: At the risk of really showing my ignorance I will tell you my application and you decide if it has any relavence to yours. My wife and I have a duet and she plays a Yamaha PSR 550 keyboard. It has active electronics and we plug 1/4 instrument cable and run directly into a 1/4 inch Hi Z channel input. We set her keyboard volume at 1/2 and adjust system volume via channel gain. She can fine tune her volume at the keyboard during performances and we have never damged anything. Quite frankly, we have never used the Direct Box unless we need to make a longer cable run or we are running our laptop into a channel for DJ purposes.
Yes that hookup is ok,the 1/4 jacks are there for direct hookup of keyboards and other powered instrument but in cases where long runs need to be made especially via xlr snakes then a direct box must be used,mics basses and guitars must not use direct 1/4" hookup.
