Dan, Rich, Kevin and all,
I've just made a test using two types of adapting leads, to take a 3-pin
professional mic to a 3.5 mm stereo socket. For the test I'm using a Sony
Walkman WMD6C cassette recorder and a Sennheiser ME67 mic. The first lead
has a mini-plug one end and a 3-pin socket at the other. It is not wired
exactly as described by Rich and Dan, but it does work satisfactorily.
The second lead uses a Tandy adapter/transformer, part no. 274-0016, cost
around $25 in Australia. On the adapter is written: Lo-Z Balanced to H-Z
Unbalanced. It isn't a pre-amp, just a transformer. Using this set-up, I
get 5-10 dB more gain, i.e. a stronger signal, than I do with lead 1.
A few years I borrowed a FEL pre-amp (made in UK) which gave 20 dB better
gain (using lead 1 set-up) but at much greater expense. I reckoned that th=
e
Tandy adapter was quite good enough to be used for a back-up system, and wa=
s
certainly worth the $25 for the boost in signal.
>From my test with the WMD6C, I concluded that it is better to use a
transformer of some sort, to connect to the pro mic. But maybe the
situation is different for a consumer minidisk such as MD DR7? Would the
minidisk have better input capacity than the WMD6C? Making an
adapter/transformer redundant?
For the record, on my lead no. 1, I had shorted pins 2 & 3 which run to the
tip and the ring of the miniplug, while pin 1 runs to the sleeve. It seems
to work fine, but this isn't the same as Rich and Dan suggested, so maybe
I've done the wiring wrong? Would that affect the strength of signal, or
just be potentially more noisy?
Thanks for all your help,
Vicki Powys
Australia
on 24/11/03 4:21 AM, Kevin Dowd at wrote:
> I've used a product named "Audio Buddy" in the past to match and
> preamplify balanced microphones to line inputs. It cost about $100
> as I recall. And it supplies phantom power if you need it. I've
> had great luck with mine.
>
> -Kevin
>
>
>
>
>> Vicki Powys, you asked,
>>
>>> What is the best way then to connect a 3-pin professional mic (e.g. a
>>> Sennheiser K6 series mic) to a consumer minidisc? Do you just use an
>>> adapter lead or is it more complicated than that? (I now gather from R=
ich,
>>> Martyn and others that the "plug-in power" presents no problem for pro =
mics
>>> - thanks for that information guys!)
>>
>> I just use an adaptor. For a mono mic, pin 2 to both tip and ring of
>> the mini-phone plug (left and right inputs), pins 1 and 3 to the
>> sleeve (ground).
>>
>> Some people make adaptors with capacitors to block the plug-in power,
>> but I've never worried about it and never had a problem.
>>
>> -Dan Dugan
>>
>>
Rich Peet wrote:
> What I do for my balanced to unbalanced cables is to keep the wires
> separate on the XLR end. I only short pins 1 and 3 on the 3.5 mm
> end. This gives a slight noise reduction advantage. I also use
> stereo low-profile cable and double wire to also give a slightly
> better noise advantage. I also have some cables that are stereo cable
> to the MD and then 2 cables comming out of the first xlr spliting to
> the second xlr. Let me know if you want photos and diagrams.
>
> Rich Peet
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
|