Circuit geeks, help!

[rhu]

What's the best way to allow N headsets to listen to one headphone-out jack? I have a Zoom H4 that I'm using to record vocals over a prerecorded accompaniment track. The Zoom basically lets me bring a "recording studio" with me to whatever room I'm going to use to record.

When I've got a soloist, then I'll use a simple splitter cable so she and I can both listen together.

When I've got a trio, can I hook up multiple splitters in parallel? At what point will I be reducing the impedance to the point that the Zoom will treat it like a short and get damaged? Should I try to have two parallel circuits of two series headphones? I forget how impedance combines --- if these were resistors, that's what I'd do, and I'd hope that I can crank the volume up twice as loud so each headphone still works.

And when I've got a chorus of twenty or so people, each bringing their own earbuds, what then?


Should I give up and look to buy (or heaven help me build) some sort of inexpensive, lightweight, compact amplifier with lots of independent outputs?

Comments

Why not use a home FM broadcaster?

[jikamens.livejournal.com]

There are various products on the market for short-range FM broadcasting. Why not use one of those, and then your participants just need their own FM radios with headphones?

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

Ummm. Maybe I'm being naive. But can you use speakers? :)

I assume that you have to be in a quite place in order to record, so wouldn't speakers be easier than N headphones? Or is the listening sound quality that important?

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

The speakers would bleed back into the vocal tracks. (The Zoom gives me 4 tracks to work with, so the pre-recorded accompaniment is on 1+2 and the vocals go on 3+4 for later mxing down.)

[angwantibo.livejournal.com]

Ahhh.