1/4 inch to xlr adaptor

What kind of mic do you have? Is the jack cable hard wired into it?

You also need to know if it's balanced or unbalanced.
Looking at the jack will usually tell you this. Tip and sleeve only = unbalanced. Tip, ring and sleeve = balanced.

It'd be a better choice to just cut the jack off and wire on an XLR socket.
The reason is that as you plug in a jack, the tip and ring briefly contact ground.

If Phantom power was turned on, you'd short 48v to ground every time you plug in/out with phantom on.

With XLR, there's no cross contamination, if you like, and pin1 is slightly long so that ground makes contact first.

There's also another reason why some mics have jacks hardwired, and that reason is that they usually aren't 'professional' quality microphones.

Tell us more.
 
Steenamaroo said:
What kind of mic do you have? Is the jack cable hard wired into it?

You also need to know if it's balanced or unbalanced.
Looking at the jack will usually tell you this. Tip and sleeve only = unbalanced. Tip, ring and sleeve = balanced.

It'd be a better choice to just cut the jack off and wire on an XLR socket.
The reason is that as you plug in a jack, the tip and ring briefly contact ground.

If Phantom power was turned on, you'd short 48v to ground every time you plug in/out with phantom on.

With XLR, there's no cross contamination, if you like, and pin1 is slightly long so that ground makes contact first.

There's also another reason why some mics have jacks hardwired, and that reason is that they usually aren't 'professional' quality microphones.

Tell us more.
Click to expand...
AND ..... often mics with only a 1/4" plug are high impedance while XLR mics are usually low impedance.
 
Instrument inputs are very high impedance—usually close to a megohm, which is about a factor of 20–100 higher than you'd typically use for a high impedance microphone. It will work, but it isn't ideal. That said, a high impedance microphone generally isn't ideal, so I'd just use that input until you can upgrade to a better mic. :)

You definitely will not want to enable the pad unless you're doing something utterly insane.
 
Shure makes transformer adapters to change the impedance and connector to get that Mic into your interface. Last time I checked (1980's) they were about $25, but that was a very long time ago. I think your best bet would be to get a proper Mic, they can be had for as little as $50 if you look hard enough.
 
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