Hot answers tagged cable
9
The answer is: it depends. It depends on how much RF noise is in the environment you're running the cable through and it depends on how strong the signal is you're sending along that cable relative to the noise in the environment.
It's not typical that you've got a choice of outputs on a device between balanced and unbalanced but, given a choice, I'll ...
8
XLR connectors have a lock, so they are less likely to be unplugged by accident. Also, when connecting or disconnecting them, they are less likely to cause short circuit or produce noise because of their design (the TRS design may cause that). In general, the connector is more robust.
In your scenario, check if your monitors and interface support balanced ...
8
What you need is a simple mixer. It will function independently of your computers, and (unlike a y-cable) you'll have a master volume control.
If you only have two stereo sources, something small like this Behringer Xenyx 502 or a similar one from any other company will do nicely. Pick the brand based on what's most important to you (tone, features, ...
8
Different form factors allow use for different applications - I believe they are capable of carrying the same signals. 1/4" cables are more durable - I've bent many mini jacks.
The thing to be aware of is that there is professional line level and consumer line level, so you need to make sure your equipment is calibrated to work together.
From your ...
7
If you use a new crappy cable, it's going to sound worse than a well-made and cared for high-quality cable that's 10 years old.
But by the same token, a well-used workhorse cable that's been cared for properly for 10 years might not sound as good as something studio-grade.
Age really has nothing to do with it. Quality, construction, and care are what ...
7
It depends on a lot of things!
1) What else is going on? How many other cables are in the vicinity of your cable? The more other cables you have in the area, the more likely there is to be interference.
2) How thick and well-shielded is the cable? A consumer, high-gauge, thin little bit of zip wire is much more susceptible to interference than thick, ...
7
The 3-pin XLR connector has two advantages over a 1/4" connector.
It provides balanced audio, which means that the cable is protected against electrical interferences from mobile phones or other devices. The longer the cable the more this can be an issue, if you don't use XLR cables.
A XLR cable can transport 48 V phantom power that some microphones need. ...
7
Do you have a component out. An R/G/B or R/G/B/V/U feed should be stable over a 100 ft run as long as you can separate the components on different wires. We do this for the Excel and Break Out youth conferences with Youth For Christ and our runs are significantly longer than 100 feet. If you don't, you could probably get a reasonably cheap firewire to ...
6
You shouldn't have any trouble with this. The voltages coming from microphones are next to nothing, and phantom power is DC and from the same source. Think of a snake cable with 32+ channels in it, running a couple hundred feet.
You only need to be concerned about power cables running in parallel to your microphone cables. Even then, it generally isn't a ...
6
Branding. Price. Policy on stifling competition.
In all reality, a good cable shouldn't do anything between Point A and Point B. Any cable claims to that is either lying or doing something you don't want it to.
I've found that the best cables I can get are the ones I make for myself at 1/10th the cost of the big brands. Even the lifetime warranty isn't ...
6
1/4" TS/TRS is a far superior interconnect than RCA/phono in every way, except size.
If you have to choose an output for an instrument, it should be 1/4" if at all possible.
1/4" TS cables are more robust, much more easily repairable, and are used throughout the professional audio industry.
RCA cables were invented (by RCA) for use in consumer ...
5
You can often make your own passive "mixer" similar to a Y-cable. You just need to put isolation resistors in series with each output before tying them together, or the two outputs will see each other as short circuits and destroy each other. The resistor method is not as good as a real mixer, but it can work in some circumstances.
Why Not Wye?
5
The warnings from WLPhoenix and Josh are absolutely correct: most cable connections do never have a significant influence on the sound, regardless of the cable brand.
There is one important exception: guitar cables. Because most electric guitars have only primitive passive high-impedance electronics (the same applies to passive electric basses), supplied ...
4
Not dangerous at all. You may have impedance matching issues though. And possibly lots of noise in the signal because of the unbalanced source and mis-matched impedance.
Start with the volume on the Yamahas all the way down and, with something playing on the television, nudge the volume up ever so slightly until you can hear the source. You want to make ...
4
Line level balanced out to a line level balanced input on a mixer is the best connection there is for long cable runs. Line outs have small source impedances that are good at driving long cables.
I'm not sure what you mean by "use a DI box for everything line level". DI boxes turn a high output impedance into a low output impedance, but line outs already ...
4
Do audio cable splitters reduce signal quality or add noise?
Not in principle. Assuming the input impedance of both recipients is substantially smaller than the output impedance of the mixer (which it normally is), both do ideally recieve exactly the same signal that each of them would if connected alone.
However in practise, there is one problem which ...
4
The best bang for your buck will be to make it yourself: buy a good brand of plugs (neutrik, switchcraft, etc) from Markertek or equivalent and use plain old 2-conductor AC extension cord for the cabling. Banana plugs or Speakon are preferable to 1/4" but not terribly common in guitar rigs.
Make the cable as short as possible, but not too short!
4
Travis, you have, perhaps unwittingly, stumbled upon a question that has raged for quite some time. In short, there is no answer. Or more to the point, there is no agreed-upon answer. The Wikipedia entry on this is fairly concise for the tl;dr crowd...
There is debate among audiophiles surrounding the impact that high-end
cables have on audio ...
4
As you have Wi-Fi access you could buy a Wi-Fi capable camera. For example the HP T450 costs $134 and is able to stream to Ustream via Wi-Fi. The pages 39-42 of the manual (PDF) elaborate on the use of Wi-Fi to stream to Ustream.
This is just one of many Wi-Fi capable camera's. Sony's Bloggie ($150) can also stream over Wi-Fi, but it uses Qik as its footage ...
4
You can absolutely run composite video over RG-59 or RG-6 without any trouble up to a few hundred feet in my experience. (Analog style security cameras utilize composite connections and run hundreds of feet.) You could even use a video amp to extend further.
Also consider that when you encode/compress the stream for broadcasting, you are essentially ...
4
Unfortunately there is no perfect or exact answer. Your question topic mentions HD-SDI, which is a digital signal. Those tends to degrade 'cliff-wise', unlike analog signals where degradation is gradual. It will partly depend on the quality of the receiving device -- whether or not, or how well, it can capture the signal as the eye pattern turns to mush.
...
4
What you are talking about is upscaling and any current HDTV will do upscaling automatically. Upscaling doesn't work miracles though, it will only make it so that the lower quality signal can be watched on a higher quality display. It just multiplies the pixels so that a 720 by 480 (.9 pixel compressed) signal for example doesn't end up only taking up 1/4 ...
3
No it does not mean you can do anything wirelessly - it is a cable - and it isn't likely to help you stream anything to it either, unless you have a requirement for HDMI devices to share a network connection.
Version 1.4 of the HDMI standard allows for 100Mb ethernet to be transmitted along the cable between to HDMI 1.4 capable devices.
Check out the HDMI ...
3
MIDI is designed such that on a single signal chain you have one sender that is broadcasting events on up to 16 channels; the default MIDI port chain (IN/OUT/THRU) only allows you to have one controller. Basically you have your sequencer's OUT hooked to your controller's IN, your controller's OUT hooked up to your sequencer's IN, and your other receivers ...
3
Is this really a problem?
I doubt it but you can work this out yourself with a simple experiment. Set up your environment as you would for a real recording session. Record a minute or so of silence with all 10 microphones. Repeat with just 5 connected, then 1, then none. Compare the difference in the "silent" recordings e.g. is the peak amplitude of the ...
3
A long VGA cable with a proper amp/spliter on the TX side, would be the simplest option. You can get good VGA cables up to 150' at modest prices from http://www.pccables.com .
Another good option is a CAT5 extender kit.
http://milestek.com/p-16209-vga-over-cat5ecat6-decora-wall-plate-set.aspx
Without a more detailed description of what you are trying to ...
3
It really depends on your equipment. The Neutrik combo connector has separate connectors for the XLR and TRS pins, so it depends on whether the digital recorder in your setup feeds phantom power to both the XLR and the TRS pins. For such instances, this thread might be of help, although I've never tried it myself and you'll have to open your device and get ...
3
I do not know of any meaningful electrical difference between them at the line- or instrument-level voltages that they usually carry.
I believe the 3.5mm plug was created to be a "miniaturized" version of the 1/4" plug, which was already in general use. 3.5mm is more commonly seen in consumer electronics, and it's usually a TRS plug (for ...
3
Like most things, it depends. There are several factors at play: the impedance of the source, the nature of the circuit (balanced vs unbalanced), the capacitance of the cable, etc.
Ideally you want a low impedance source driving a low-capacitance, balanced circuit.
The impedance of the source is a big factor. A low driving impedance will not be affected as ...
3
Fred42Vid's answer is good (though the 1/4" jack is probably a balanced TRS). I wanted to add something, though; on a mixer, when you have both a TRS and an XLR, they sometimes have subtly different signal paths. Specifically, the microphone input is often run through a second op-amp to boost its signal by about 20dBu before the main gain stage (controllable ...
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