M-Audio Audiophile 2496 Cable question.

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Phobea

Bit of a noob
Sorry for this question being so simple but I'm really stumped by what my local music shop is telling me that I need.

I recently purchased the Audiophile 2496 together with the Behringer Tube Ultragain Mic100 preamp, and naturally being a complete newbie I didn't anticipate the need for extra cables.

I only have a simple Kam KDM550 microphone with which I'll be recording for the time being, it doesn't require phantom power so I'm just going to use the standard XLR-1/4" jack (sorry I don't know its proper name) cable that came with it to connect it to the preamp. The guy at the music store did try flogging me an XLR-XLR cable telling me I needed it but it doesn't appear that I do.

My main question is which cable is best to use for connecting the preamp to my soundcard? I appear to have another 1/4" I/O on the preamp and also another 2 XLR I/Os... first of all the guy told me I should use an XLR-MIDI cable, but now he's telling me I should use a 1/4" - Aux red/white cable. I don't need stereo IN and I'd rather use up a mono IN with the Mic, saving a stereo IN for anything I may want to connect later.

I don't really know, but connecting the preamp to the Aux red/white just doesn't seem to sit right in my mind. Is that an OK thing to do?

My apologies for the extreme n00bness of this question, I'm more of a software guy.
 
The Audiophile has two inputs,(actually four, with spdif and midi) you can get two 1/4" to RCA cables and have two channels input into the soundcard, left and right. just hard pan left and right in your software to get two seperate channels.


hope that helps ;)
 
Sort of helped, thanks. Is that better option than using the MIDI port up with a mic then?
 
Like Carter said, MIDI is NOT audio. Also, despite the fact that the your music store dude told you to get a XLR-MIDI cable (what the heck would that accomplish?), he was correct in telling you that you should us an XLR-XLR cable for the microphone, even if you are not using phantom power.
 
Thanks for the replies. I've got the XLR-RCA cables all plugged in and set up now just having some issues configuring the software. I'll save that for another post.

Why would it be better to use an XLR-XLR cable as opposed to the XLR-Phono cable that came with the mic? Is the sound quality just better? I'm trying to justify the purchase to myself.
 
It's more about quality.

The XLR to 1/4", I think you mean, is not the best connection you could possibly have. XLR to XLR ensures a quality connection to your new pre-amp, and that you are using the correct level and connection. Moving to 1/4" before leaving the pre-amp is not a good idea because the 1/4" is most likely unbalanced. This means you might have noise on your cable.

XLR cables usually aren't all that expensive. It's really a good idea to get one.
 
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