At 4:14 PM +0000 2/1/09, Philip Tyler wrote:
>The other way is to use something like an Art Phantom II which is a
>battery phantom power unit. This has XLR's in and out, so you would
>need an XLR to mini jack lead. This would allow you to use phantom
>powered mic's with the PCM D50's own built-in mic amps.
>
>Phil
>
>On 1 Feb 2009, at 15:34, "justinasia"
><<justinasia%40yahoo.com>> wrote:
....
>What I mean to say is, is there a reasonably priced solution to using
>XLR mics (with phantom power) with the SONY PCM-D50?
Phil is correct. A $50 Art Phantom II or the $70 Rolls PB-224 will
support use of phantom mics with all consumer and prosumer sound
recorders I've tested that have 1/8", PIP or non-PIP, unbalanced mic
inputs. There is considerable discussion about this in the list
archive. Try starting with http://tinyurl.com/c93f8l and
http://tinyurl.com/cgb4af There's also a test with an SD MP2
external pre compared to using just a phantom unit
http://tinyurl.com/bo4ppb For your reference, Justin, the D50 seems
to have very very similar noise performance to the Hi-MD's pre; they
might even share the same mic pre/a-d component based on tests I've
heard.
> I had read that one cannot properly use some of the other products
>but I do not
>understand it. If people have experience with this I would really
>appreciate to hear it.
>This was posted on the Tapers forum about it:
>
>"The XLR-1 box seems overpriced, but when looking for a less expensive
>solution, people need to realize that there's no such thing as a
>universal passive adapter from two XLR inputs to an unbalanced
>mini-plug unless it contains a pair of audio transformers. And the
>good ones of those, such as Jensen or Lundahl, are quite expensive
>(see for example
><http://www.jensen-transformers.com/ms2xx.html>http://www.jensen-transform=
ers.com/ms2xx.html).
>
>Without transformers or active circuitry, no matter how you wire the
>box (among the several possibilities that exist) there will be some
>good mikes that it won't work with, or won't work properly. It may
>pass no signal at all, or it may pass signal from one output lead
>while it shorts the other one to ground, increasing the distortion and
>lowering the maximum SPL of the microphone. Or it may work fine. But
>that depends on exactly how the box and the output circuit of the
>microphones are designed. There's no one formula such as "just connect
>pin 3 to pin 1" or "just connect pin 2 to pin 1" or "just connect pin
>2 and leave pin 3 hanging" all of which I've seen people give out as
>if it was the most obvious, well-known thing in the world.
>
It is quite true that high quality mic pres produce subtle sound
quality differences even if the noise produced between two units
happened to be identical (unlikely). In the times I conducted blind
tests to try to analyze the sound quality difference between high
quality pres, I found that the differences (in tonal balance) were
very small in comparison to differences that would be introduced by
our different monitoring systems.
The two phantom units mentioned above do not affect SPL performance
and they take care of everything you need to worry about regarding
impedance matching for most 3.5mm unbalanced mic inputs. As Lou
points out, all that is required, in addition, is an adapter cable
that ties the output of pins #1 and #3 from both channels of the
phantom unit making them unbalanced Rob D.
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