XLR\RCA\1/4 etc

[jackbrazzo]

Why on earth are there so many. On older gear like the roland gear its all 1\4. Now all mixers tend to have an XLR port and RCA as well.

Why did XLR come in - Is it to service powered\active speakers? Is there technically a better connection. I've got some old gear (BOSS KM-60) and its all1\4 pain in the ass to connect etc

[Themis]

xlr has many benefits, but as much as i know not one of them is relevant to home studio producing gear .. so i ask myself the same.

[Hades]

hold on guys, as far as I understand all of it,
I think they only put XLR on mixers because XLR is the most common balanced connection there is, and you definitely need XLR to connect mics.
as far as I know, there aren't any synths with XLR outputs on them I think. (correct me if I'm wrong)
In any case, I presume XLR balanced is slightly better than jack balanced (stereo jack 1/4), because all the expensive outboard equipment I have has XLR inputs and outputs, and not balanced 1/4 jacks.

RCA is just a non-professional unbalanced form of connector. Avoid it wherever possible.

I gets really irritating once you gotta hook everything up through patchbays.
I recently bought a new mixer, and had to recable the whole studio. I had to run all the outputs of my gear to my 3 patchbays which all took 1/4 balanced jacks, as well as run all the inputs and outputs of my mixer to the patchbays too.
The outputs of my Eventide H8000fw were all XLR, some male some female. The same for my Fireworx.
All the outputs of my Midas mixer were also XLR, some male some female.
And there was 7m distance between my midas and my patchbays.
I swear I had to order cables from 3 different internet stores to find all the exact cables I needed from a good quality brand.
I think I must have spent at least 2000 euro's on cables alone, approx. And I must have well above 150 cables in here.

anyway, I had connected all of it and it's fantastic to have it all running the way it should, it's a breeze to work with it all.
But about a month ago, all of a sudden I had my jomox giving me massive trouble.
90% of my kicks were giving an irritating popping sound, like the outputs were massively distorted. First I checked all the normal stuff : took a different channel on my mixer, took a different channel on my patchbay, changed cables,...
And the strangest thing was, if I used the headphones output of the jomox instead of the indvidual output, I was able to get a much better signal.
This was the biggest problem for the kicks, but the claps and hi-hats gave some trouble as well.
I could only use my kicks if I turned the main output down to 30 instead of the recommended 127 (Jomox manual), which meant I had to turn up the gain too much so my signal was way too dirty.
Imagine having a real nice equiped studio you've been working your ass off for about 10 years to assemble it all together, and then having the heartbeat (your kick) giving you this kind of trouble !
I swear I seldomly had a more irritating problem in my studio !!

I eventually contacted mr Jomox, and he said it must be the mixer, talking about how digital Yamaha mixers had crappy inputs and blablabla. However this was a high quality brand new Midas Venice F32, not some crappy digital Yamaha mixer !!
After a day or two I remembered the Jomox had unbalanced outputs, and I used all balanced cables. So I went back up to my attic to take out my old unbalanced cables, and connected the kick, clap and hi-hat direct outputs with unbalanced cables. I still had to take the individual outputs a little bit down, but after that, everything worked perfectly !!
I had always read how balanced cables are supposed to give you a much higher output signal than unbalanced ones, but I had not heard any difference with any of my other gear. But with the jomox it was impossible to run it through balanced cables.
It still beats me why one would make such a beautiful piece of equipment like the xbase 888 with unbalanced outputs.
I mean, it basically means that if you run it through a professional mixer with professional cables you get massive trouble.
But since mr Jomox only answers your email if you have a problen, and not if you have a specific question, I guess I'll never know...

[jackbrazzo]

Hades - What a story and thats essentially what I am getting it - loads of cables require and a lot of equipment have diff inputs. Because the Roland stuff is 1\4 I am probably going to need loads of guitar cables - Is ebay the best place to get cheap cables. I suppose I only really want them 1m long.!

[steevio]

XLR is the usual connetor in professional situations, like sound systems, microphones, balanced cables in studios etc..
so i suppose they put XLRs on mixers for those situations.
they are robust and lock into place.

i have a bunch of convertors and convertor cables in my studio to deal with any situation, its worth making some up and then you wont get frustrated

[Hades]

Hades - What a story and thats essentially what I am getting it - loads of cables require and a lot of equipment have diff inputs. Because the Roland stuff is 1\4 I am probably going to need loads of guitar cables - Is ebay the best place to get cheap cables. I suppose I only really want them 1m long.!

if you're interested,
I have quite a few cables extra that I'd be happy to sell for a small price.
you can choose whether you want balanced or unbalanced, and I have different lengths too. all of them 100% working.
(but if I were you, I'd definitely get balanced as much as possible)
The thing is, I had originally planned to put my mixer on my right side, right on top of my 2 racks. but I eventually had to put it on my left side because the racks were too high => I had at least 30 brand new cables that were useless because they were too short.

But if you only want 1m, be careful. I'd always take a little extra than what you need.
It's always a good idea to keep your cables as short as possible, but if you can't move anything around because your cables are too short, than that's also frustrating.
Most cables I have extra are 1m or 2m long, but like I said, if you're interested, just send me a PM

[Hades]

i have a bunch of convertors and convertor cables in my studio to deal with any situation, its worth making some up and then you wont get frustrated

same here, especially now I recabled everything.
I eventually considered having all the extra cables a nice security against future problems.
Just 2 weeks ago I had no signal coming through on one of the inputs of my soundcard. I just had to locate the origin of the problem, open a drawer, swap the dead cable with a new one and I was ready. Took me 5 minutes to be back in business.
After all the years of dealing with hardware, and also having the frustration of "the more hardware you get, the more cables you need, bigger mixer,... and eventually the more stuff that can break down", I'm happy to discover I'm getting quicker and quicker at solving problems.
I find that re-assuring in a way.

they always say it's dead easy to make your own cables, and you save lots of money, but to be honest, when I looked around the prices for high quality cable + connectors, I didn't have the impression I was gonna save tons, plus I simply couldn't be bothered to spend all those hours on it.

[tone-def]

generally speaking it's 1/4 jacks for instruments (synths, keyboards, guitars etc) and XLR for everything else professional (what Steevio said). some outboard processors can have either 1/4 or XLR.
RCA is for consumer Hi-Fi equipment and DJ gear.