Cables and Such

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sblmgregory

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I'm recording from a condenser mic, > xlr input on my mixer > my pro-tools interface > laptop.

What is the best type connection to use from the mixer to the interface? And does the cord length matter?

Scott
 
In general, shorter cable lengths are better. The length should leave a comfortable amount of slack between the two pieces of gear. More importantly, it should be the correct type of cable. If the mixer output is balanced and the interface input is balanced, you would use a TRS cable. If unbalanced, you'd use a TS cable.

Does your ProTools interface have an XLR mic input on it? If so, I would consider going directly from the mic to the preamp on the PT interface, bypassing the mixer. The idea with that is to keep the signal path as short and simple as possible from the mic to the recording device. The less electronics in the path, the better. Especially cheap electronics, if it is a budget mixer.

But your setup is minimal and direct to begin with, so just make sure you set up the levels properly and you should be able to do some nice sounding recordings.
 
I'm using a yamaha mixer that has compression. I'm a novice at recording and I never liked the compression plug ins PT had. So I'm trying this. So the setup is mic to XLR on mixer, TRS mixer to TRS interface
 
Depending what model Yamaha you have, some have line level XLR outputs, others have TRS. It doesn't really matter because both are balanced. If the mixer has XLR outs, you may need an XLR to TRS cable.

With balanced line level sources, the cable length isn't really an issue, other than you don't want a "plate of spaghetti" between the mixer and interface.

You may find your mixer also has RCA/Phono inputs and outputs. You can get away with using these but, being unbalanced, they are far more susceptible to electrical interference.
 
I think the "spaghetti" factor is a bit of and issue. The cables I have are like 12' or something. I may just buy new balanced cables that are 2m

Thanks for the help all
 
okay, so I unpacked the mixer and started looking at it and from the manual it wasn't clear to me which insert to run the cable from the mixer to my PT interface. Can anyone help

yamaha mg102c.webp

it's a yamaha mg102c mixer if you can't see from the image.
 
You have choices.

If you're only doing one thing at a time, you might as well just run from the "Stereo Out" TRS jacks at the extreme right hand end. For a mono source like a mic, you can pan the channel hard left or hard right and just use one of them if you want.

If you want to get into multitracking, you can get special cables to use the actual "Insert" jack above each of the four mic channels. It's the third connector down (Mic XLR, Line TRS then Insert). However, note that this is a "special" connector designed to have a send and return on a single TRS, making the send feed unbalanced. I wouldn't work that way unless I needed the facility.

FYI, you can also consider running the output of the Protools interface back into the mixer on a spare pair of line level inputs. Depending on how you work, this can be a convenient way of creating a headphone monitor mix, combining the live mic and the playback from your computer.
 
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