Please help me find a cord!

  • Thread starter Thread starter squibble94
  • Start date Start date
squibble94

squibble94

Nature of Force
Hey guys, I just got a TASCAM US-800 interface. The outputs are RCA. My monitors, M-Audio BX5a's, have TRS and XLR inputs. I know I need an RCA to TRS/XLR. My question is, does it need to be labeled "Speaker cable"? Thanks!
 
Monitors are self-powered, right? You need LINE-LEVEL or INSTRUMENT cables, NOT speaker cables. RCA to TS or XLR cables are easy to find- don't worry about TRS; the cables (being RCA/2 connector/not shielded) on one end may have shielded cabling, but the may not. RCA to TS will be cheaper than RCA to XLR, too.
 
Uhdinator is spot on. Your speakers have balanced inputs, which is why TRS not TS, but it seems your interface is not balanced, so you just use the TRS jacks as TS and it should work fine. They will be shielded - tip will be signal and sleeve will be shield/earth.
I guess folks will have made this clear already but: you use speaker cables between amp and speakers. Your speakers have amps built in, so you use a signal cable, like you'd use from a CD machine to an amp. Signal cables carry low current and are set up to shield the low signal from picking up interference. Speaker cables are high current and not prone to interference - you can use mains cable as speaker cable, though dedicated speaker cable is optimised to provide maximum profit to the manufacturer... as well as theoretically sounding slightly better...
 
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