Cable and connetion question

[riccol]

O.K. let me see if I can ask this question in a way I'm understood.
Been recording on my computer now for about 4 year, but still a newbie in so many ways. I have had the same setup for quite some time.

I have a Adiophile 24/96 card. The I/O's on the card are RCA. So going to my monitors I come out with RCA to RCA jacks into a little mixers tape in, --then 1/4 cables out throught the main mix to my monitors. Only thing I use this little Behringer mixer for is to control my headphones and then the monitors with the main mix control knob.

I have come up with some toy money and probably will be upgrading to a new system in a few months. Moving into a place with a nice office I will use just for my little hobby studio.
Now here is my question. (I'm getting there) Looking at a variety of Sound cards -- Don't need many I/O's but thinking of a higher quality card. (mabe even a Lynx) Some cards come with breakout cables in XLR

First do they make 1/4 to XLR cables?
What about XLR to RCA?
And lastly does this type of cable changing affect my sound?

Just trying to think about how I will hook up stuff up If I go with a card having XLR I/O's I know this is a dumb question. But I have had the same setup for so long, and hookup stuff always give me brain cramps --- and dangi, after all I asked this in the newbie forum!!

 

[Rokket]

I'll try to answer some of it, but I don't record to my pc, I use a digital recorder and transfer tracks to pc via usb, but:

1/4" to XLR - I've only seen 1/4" to XLR female couplings (I have on for my mic that I don't use)....

I've never seen an XLR to RCA, but I suppose if you are handy with a soldering iron...

Changing to different cables could affect your sound as far as adding unwanted noise. XLR cables are shielded, most RCA or TRS cables are not (but you can buy them shielded if you look around). That will be the only change.

You can buy adaptors that will give you the connections you need without having to buy cables. Check out Radio Shack.

Hope this was of some help.

 

[bennychico11]

you can have any kind of connectors you want on cables. RCA->XLR, XLR-->1/4", 1/4" to RCA, etc. Whatever your gear needs, you can either make or buy.
however, you need to find out what your gear NEEDS. on your soundcard you need to know what connectors have preamps in them. Generally these are the XLR ones because that's the connection microphones use. You also need to find out if the 1/4" are balanced or unbalanced, and then get cables that are correctly made for these inputs. It's all about connector matching. Find out what gear you need to plug in, what it uses for connectors, and match that with your sound card.
most of what Rokket said is right, except that almost ALL cables nowadays ARE shielded. XLR, TRS, TS, RCA, etc. The different connectors on a cable will not change your sound at all as long as you keep them all relative as far as balanced or unbalanced connections go. If you buy adapters from Radio Shack, this will degrade your sound quality over time. One adapter might not be noticeable....but using an adapter to adapt an adapter that already adapts an adapter connected to an adapter, and so on....might become noticeable. It's best to get the right cable for the right job.

if you have any questions on getting specific gear to hook up to your soundcard, tell us what you have.

 

[riccol]

O.K. One more question that I should know --- sort of embarrased to ask, but what is the difference between balanced and unbalanced?

Also what is AES/EBU? Some cards say this about some of the I/O's.

If I go with the LYNX card the breakout cable all have XLR male plugs.

I go out from a pod and sometimes a J-Station with 1/4 outs
Then my pre's are VTB1's the do have XLR outs but also 1/4 outs
and then if I go through the RNC compressor it has 1/4 outs.

I can see now that I can get cable that would work. How do most people go to their monitors from the sound card? My monitors (Behringer truth) have 1/4 and XLR hookups.

 

[bennychico11]

balanced cables were created as a (very ingenious if you ask me) technique to cancel out any extraneous noise (from Radio frequencies, electrical wires, etc.) that may enter your cable as it travels from point to point. This noise can join up with your signal making it really nasty sounding and annoying the hell out of you.
it all has to do with properties of electricity and sound working together. the connector on a microphone is usually an XLR connector which has three pins in it. One is the ground wire, another the + wire which is the microphone signal, and the third is the - which is the same as the + but flipped around so it's 180 degrees out of phase. as the +/- wire travels down the cable, noise is introduced to both +/- wires proportionally. when it gets over to the other side, there is a balancing circuit which flips the - side back over so it's +. Doing this flips one side of the noise out of phase. So the audio signal is two positives, while the noise is + and -. Then the circuit combines them together.
When two audio signals (in this instance the noise) that are 180 degrees out of phase and are of equal amplitude, combine together they cancel eachother out. So this gets rid of our noise. And when we combine the two + signals together, the good signal increases in amplitude giving us a 3dB increase in volume.

Unbalanced cables don't have the the - wire....so there is no noise canceling and no balancing circuit to go through. XLR is balanced and TRS (the 1/4" or 1/8" connectors that are used for mono and have two black rings around them) are balanced. RCA and TS (1/4" with one black ring) are unbalanced.

hope some of that made sense
http://www.prosoundweb.com/install/spotlight/whrl/wb.php for a more technical way to explain it.

AES/EBU (Audio Engineering Society/European Broadcasting Union) is a digital format of connecting digital gear and carries 2 channels down it. They use XLR connectors, but different kind of cable.
As far as connecting your monitors, there should be at least 1 pair of outputs on the soundcard that can be sent to your monitors either XLR or 1/4"

hope this helps a bit

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

balanced cables were created as a (very ingenious if you ask me) technique to cancel out any extraneous noise (from Radio frequencies, electrical wires, etc.) that may enter your cable as it travels from point to point. This noise can join up with your signal making it really nasty sounding and annoying the hell out of you.
it all has to do with properties of electricity and sound working together. the connector on a microphone is usually an XLR connector which has three pins in it. One is the ground wire, another the + wire which is the microphone signal, and the third is the - which is the same as the + but flipped around so it's 180 degrees out of phase. as the +/- wire travels down the cable, noise is introduced to both +/- wires proportionally. when it gets over to the other side, there is a balancing circuit which flips the - side back over so it's +. Doing this flips one side of the noise out of phase. So the audio signal is two positives, while the noise is + and -. Then the circuit combines them together.
When two audio signals (in this instance the noise) that are 180 degrees out of phase and are of equal amplitude, combine together they cancel eachother out. So this gets rid of out noise. And when we combine the two + signals together, the good signal increases in amplitude giving us a 3dB increase in volume.

Unbalanced cables don't have the the - wire....so there is no noise canceling and no balancing circuit to go through. XLR is balanced and TRS (the 1/4" or 1/8" connectors that are used for mono and have two black rings around them) are balanced. RCS and TS (1/4" with one black ring) are unbalanced.

hope some of that made sense

*Applause*

that's the most lucid description of how a balanced cable works that I've ever heard. Cheers.

 

[riccol]

I agree APPLAUSE
Thank you for your kind patient response. Dat helped a lot!!!!

One more question about how most people hook up their monitors.
Right now I go out of my 24/96 with the rca's out to a little behringer mixer--into the tape in -- then out from the main outs to my monitors. That give me a control knob for the volume of my monitors during playback.
Is this how most do it? Is there a better way as I set up things in the future?
If I go straight from the card to the monitors the only control I have on the volume is from the software -- right?

 

[bennychico11]

yep, that's how a lot of people do it. bringing everything back to a mixer so you have one master control over all the volume.