A crazy cable!

[Silly Me]

Has anyone ever seen and/or know where I can get a cable that is female stereo XLR on one end and dual mono male XLR cables on the other? This would be for hooking up a stereo microphone to my Roland VS-1680's two mono XLR inputs.

[Vernon Kuehn]

What microphone do you have that is a stereo microphone? Did it not come with some kind of adapter cable.

I have never seen a cable like you are asking for. I would go buy the plugs, get out my soldering iron an make it!

[Silly Me]

My microphone is an Audio Technica AT822, and it did come with two cable adapters. One goes to stereo miniplug (which is useful for field recording into a portable DAT recorder) and the other splits it into two mono ¼" plugs. Now correct me if I'm wrong (I really don't know much about the nature of cables), but in both cases, aren't I losing quality by once the signal goes through those two types of plugs? Wouldn't the quality of the signal remain stronger if it remained XLR the whole way?

[Robert D]

Hmm, so, an XLR connector is a three pin connector, yes? If that's what you have coming out of that mic, and it's a stereo mic, then what you have is two unbalanced signals (stereo left and right) and ground. Converting these to a pair of 1/4 inch phone connectors doesn't in itself cause any loss of quality. Electrically, it's the same, just in a different physical connector. The question is what happens at the input. Do the 1/4" inputs on your 1680 treat the signal the same as the XLR inputs? They do on my Yamaha 03d, but I don't know much about the 1680. Also, the cable that you have, does it convert to two 1/4 inch TS connectors, or two 1/4" TRS connectors?
Regards, RD

[Vernon Kuehn]

In theory, you can argue that every time you go through another plug, there is a small amount of loss, distortion, noise, who knows what. (Does not matter if the plug is XLR, quarter-inch plug or mini-plug.) Assuming you are buying top of the line cables and plugs, one 30 foot cable may be better than plugging two 15 foot cables together because you eliminate one set of contacts. That kind of fussiness however would be the kind of heroic action you would match up with a much more exotic mic than the AT822.

You can buy a mic cable with XLR connectors of any length you need and then plug the AT822 into your newly purchased cable, and then plug one of the adapters that came with your mic at the far end of the new cable.

Your mic is two "unbalanced" circuits so the mini-plugs on the adapter may be adequate for the capability of the device itself.

What kind of input jacks do you have on the pre-amp, mixer, or recorder you want to use with this mic? Again, make your own new adapter (or have it made if you are not comfortable doing this yourself) or chop off the miniplugs on the adapter and install (or have them installed) the new plugs of your choice... XLR or what ever.

Remember, cable is not XLR. Only the plugs attached to the end of the cable are XLR. Just to keep peace in your thinking.... mini-plugs at the end of a fine cable may do a better job than a great XLR plug attached to the end of a piece of crap cable.

[Vernon Kuehn]

O.k..... you had already given the answer to one of my questions in your origianl post. Looking at specs on-line, your Roland has Balanced mic inputs via either XLR or quarter inch jack.

Spec sheets on-line indicate that both of the adapters that came with your mic have mini-plugs so using to two mono miniplugs you need adapters to go from miniplug to quater-inch plugs.

Have you lashed this thing up with some kind of plugs and actually fed into the Roland? Does the Roland which is geared to deal with Balanced mic circuits accept the unbalanced signal from your mic? (Dynamic mics are usually ambidextrous. The mic itself functions as balanced or unbalanced. Condenser mics may or may not be good switch hitters.)

Some mic inputs are very forgiving as you switch from balanced to unbalanced input. Others get very temperamental. The mileage may vary on your Roland.

[apropos of nothing]

I've used that microphone. I believe Audio Technica, or someone who works with them, make a "stereo-XLR" to dual quarter-inch unbalanced cable that does a bang-up job.

-Jj
http://www.dogma.org/jjvsworld

[bombastique]

I custom make any cables you like. You can reach me (toll free) at: 877.827.5728

[Silly Me]

Holy Moley! And thanks for all the enthusiastic replies...I really appreciate this.

Okay, I've waded through all the comments and questions, and I think that I may be set with what I've got. If I'm correctly understanding what everyone's talking about, then XLR-to-dual-mono-¼" adapter-cable that came with the mic in the first place (despite some descriptions online that the AT822 comes with XLR-to-dual-mono-miniplugs) is fine for the job. I don’t know if the VS-1680 treats XLR input differently than ¼" input, but my gut instinct says no. I’ve just somehow been led to believe that XLR is better than ¼ ". I suppose this may simply be an issue of XLR being automatically balanced (right?) and ¼"…well, not. I also don’t know what the difference between TS and TRS connectors is, though I’m eager to learn. I tried to research it on the web, but I kept hitting dead ends. I also wonder how I can tell if the dual ¼" jacks are indeed balanced or not, though if the AT822’s output is unbalanced, does it matter?

[bombastique]

TS = Tip/Sleeve. an unbalanced connection. the tip is the 'conductor' and the sleeve is the shield.

TRS = Tip/Ring/Sleeve (the connector will have 3 divisions, usually black plastic rings, rather than 2). a balanced connection (typically). Tip = conductor, Ring = conductor, out of phase, Sleeve = Shield

XLR is the same as TRS (usually) in that it's a balanced connection.

With a mic that has a 3 pin XLR connector on it, it's usually a balanced mic. In the case of a stereo mic, it's unbalanced, as the pin that would normally carry the out of phase signal now carries the other side of the stereo elements signal (pin 1 - ground/shield, pin 2 - left (usually), pin 3 - right). if this is split into dual 1/4" cable, the whole thing is still unbalanced and there's no way to make it balanced unless you go thru some sort of convertor/transformer/preamp.

Many stereo mics will have a 5 pin connector, which creates a balanced connection for both stereo elements. A 5 pin connector looks like a standard XLR, but with 5 pins instead of 3. With this sort of connector you can go out to a dual XLR or TRS and still have a balanced signal on both sides.

In your situation, keep in mind that you still are dealing with mic level signals, so it's likely that using the 1/4" connectors going into the 1680 will not give you enough gain. You may still have to use 1/4" to XLR adaptors or have another cable made that goes out to XLR connectors so that you can use the mic preamp inputs, which will give you more gain than a line input.

[bombastique]

ah - just read the psrt earlier about how the 1680 has mic preamps on both 1/4" and XLR inputs, so you should be fine either way..

[Silly Me]

Okay, my apologies. I just now realized that my cable is in fact an XLR to two mono mini-plugs, with screw-on 1/4" adapters. I never noticed this before. Anyway, all things considered, I suppose that using this cable is virtually the same as the mythical stereo-XLR-to-dual-mono-XLR adapter I first started this post over. Any quality difference is essentially negligable at the level I'm working at. Yes?

I thank you all for putting your heads into so small an issue. But now I have been edudated. http://www.audioforums.com/forums/cool.gif