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3 Responses to “Cable Xlr information”

1. Hazydave says:

   January 2, 2011 at 7:37 am

   XLR connectors (and the attached cables) are used primarily on better quality microphones (probably anything over $25 these days). The cable itself may wall be the same as that used in “TRS” (Tip-Ring-Shield) 1/4″ cable. Both have two signal conductors and one gound/shield conductor. The main use of either XLR or 1/4″ TRS cables is for what musicians and audio engineers called “balanced” signals, and what electrical engineers call “differential”. This is common with mic, because most mics have a very low-level signal, and even with on-mic amplification, the signal is very prone to picking up noise along the way. But if you go a differential signal, most of that noise can be removed. The idea is a cool hack… take your mic output feed it out normally, but also feed it out inverted. If you were to add the original and inverted signals, they’d cancel each other out… so let’s not. Ok, both signals romp on down the cables, and reach your preamp or recorder or some other XLR-terminal. There, the same thing is done.. the inverted signal is now re-inverted. Here’s the magic.. any noise that was added is almost certain to be the same on both conductors. So when we invert the signal, we now have two copies of the original, uninverted signal.. one has NOISE added to it, the other INVERTED-NOISE. So add these together, and we get an amplified signal, with nearly all of the noise cancelled out.XLRs also have other pro-level features.. they’ve very rugged, and they lock in place.. no cables falling out of the mic during a performance. But without actual balanced audio driven into the cable, the mechanical improvements are the only real advantage. One very cool aspect of the XLR standard, along with the locking connectors, is that they chain.. I can hook multiple XLR cables together, and there’s always one male and one female terminal available… and one male and one female as the gear terminals (mics, mixers, camcorder or computer interfaces, etc).You can get single-ended to balanced adaptors from a company called BeachTek… they have many different versions.
2. Hillbilly Bob says:

   January 2, 2011 at 8:17 pm

   Radio Shack, Music stores, or similar outlets selling Audio PA stuff. You probably have to solder the connections, so know what you are doing or get the geeks at Rat Shack to make you one. Check this info out:http://www.nullmodem.com/Audio.htm Good luck.
3. flamingobox says:

   January 3, 2011 at 7:57 am

   Yes you can. You can get cables that are either male or female XLR to 1/8″. Though, i don’t know how great the quality is going to be once it goes through. You may have some quality or volume issues. I’ve never tried it. You might consider making the XLR your input and then getting an OUTPUT cable to go to your computer. (I’d guess a 1/2″ to 1/8″ cable. I could be wrong.)Check out this site.http://www.zzounds.com/cat–3996