right, what i'm wanting to do is know if there is a way of replacing the standard minijacks on a sound card with something more, er, good! namely xlr's. my only concern is that as an xlr is balanced, and a mini jack is not, where would i wire the -ve cold connection to on the soundcard? for starters i'll be practicing and experimenting on £3 rubbishy cards, i will eventually move on to my lovely maxi isis studio, or, if anyone (Zap?) could tell me how to mod a SB live or audigy 1 to have lots of inputs (4 minimum) off the card alone, i'll listen to that as well. the xlr thing would stil apply for those that dont know, an xlr socket looks like this: one pin is hot (+) one cold (-) and one screen
Well to start with, these sockets are pretty big and aren't going to fit in an expansion slot. Pin 2 is usually the signal, and Pins 1 & 3 are usually connected to screen. However, since you need stereo connections, there's no initial problems with you choosing which pins you use for what, just so long as you are consistant with your wiring. I suggest you connect the signals to pins 2 and 3, and the screen to pin 1 and keep it this way throughout your mod. Since these sockets won't fit in the expansion slot, and you'd have to drill new holes in your case, it might be easier to leave the existing jacks in place, and just solder some screened cable to the pins on the PCB. If you need to check which pin is L, R or GND, take an old cable with a stereo jack on it (you're going to be cutting all these off the things you normally plug into your soundcard anyway) and use a test meter to find which pin the red, white and screen are connected to and connect them up this way.
righty - i'm not using an expansion slot it's for my project here . don't want stereo connections, i want good old balanced mono connections, what xlrs are good for. The sockets are for linking it up with my mixer... I know the arrangement of the pins - 1= screen (ground), 2= hot (+), 3= cold (-) 1 would attach to the case, 2 would attach to the signal for one of the inputs. (remember each mini jack has 2 signals), and the 3rd is the one i have no clue about... i am quite keen to get the signals balanced if at all possible, and really do not want to be putting DI boxes in there or anything (lol) as tehre really is no space at all, and DI's cost quite a bit... if there is no such connector on a soundcard, i guess i'll just have to go with unbalanced though... <><
I think the only way you can do it is with a DI circuit. I don't know of any soundcards that provide balanced I/O. Perhaps if you spent mega bucks you could get such a thing but I doubt it. You could make one yourself, http://www.jensen-transformers.com/as/as007.pdf and it could be made to take up less room than a full DI box but then again prob not that much. plus audio transformers are pretty expensive (Jensen are anyway) There isn't really any need for balanced outputs unless you are travelling large distances.
yeah... i guess it doesnt matter then, unbalanced will have to do. they look nicer and more professional than full size jacks, so i'll use them anyway.
Hi there This is my first post here since I found the site and well have had a read of this post and I do not think my idea does quite what I want and I not sure what the setup is on your mixer. I was thinking if you do not intend on using XLR when not at home then u could take of the of the mini jack to 2 phoneo plug cabels and then cut the phoneo plugs off and wire up a XLR male connector to each of the end and then use the shilding of this connected to the gnd and - ends of the connector then just plug these into ur mixer and get stero not sure if this is what u want but at least it gives u the option to use XLR or mini jack Fly
whaaaa? you'll have to explain a bit more clearly, my head hurts from an 8 hour art exam stuck in a turps filled room
