Mukilteo, WA. Rane Corporation has announced a new professional-grade outboard unit to convert consumer level -10 dBV RCA outputs to balanced +4 dBu operation and vice-versa.
The Rane BB 44X Balance Buddy is a handy tool that provides two channels of conversion each way. It converts one pair from -10 dBV to +4 dBu and another pair from +4 dBu to -10 dBV simultaneously, and it has two female and two male XLR-type connectors, as well as four RCA jacks on board. This makes it easy to run balanced lines to and from a consumer device such as a stereo tape deck.
The the BB 44X preserves good signal-to-noise performance through the use of high-quality nickel core (“80” Ni) passive transformers to convert signal levels. Rane says that these transformers guarantee low distortion, wide bandwidth and high signal level handling capability.