So what? The balanced to unbalanced conversion apparently worked
fine for a number of transfers up to now. The next time you have to
send your audio 100 meters with the cable next to a power line you
can start to sweat your interconnects.
Your original description sounds very much like your interconnect has
become " one legged ". Wuzzat you ask ? Two of the three pins on
your professional tape machine expect to see some kind of connection
- specifically pins 2 & 3. Pin one is the shield or ground and it's
a bit more leisurely in it's connection requirements ( thats part of
what a three pin balanced connection is all about ). Normally in the
setup you are employing pin 2 would be connected ( eventually through
your tortured path of adaptors ) to the tip of the final plug while
pin 3 would be connected to the shield of the final plug . This
would complete the circuit for the balanced line output and give it
something to deliver sound to. It sounds like the connection for pin
2 or 3 has been lost and thus the tape deck with it's transformer
balanced output has no place to send it's audio to. I would suggest
connecting the adaptor cables to some other device like a stereo
system to see if things suddenly improve. It does sound a bit off
kilter that your coming out of the line level output of the tape deck
and into the mic level input of the computer ( they normally operate
at very different levels ) but if as you say it has worked well
before and assuming you have made no other changes it should work
well again after you sort out problems in the wiring. There are
professional audio interfaces that accept line level XLR ( thats
those three pronged thingies ) connections and output digitized audio
to Firewire or USB connections but your into hundreds or more dollars
in investment to replace a $20 solution that should work fine once
you have it sorted out.
At 2:27 PM -0400 4/2/09, Tom Piwowar wrote:
Tom Piwowar <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Audacity problem
>Here's the problem with that. The audio out on this deck is the 3-pronged
>connectors common with professional microphones. I managed to find 2
>cables that have the 3-pronged on one end, & RCA connectors on the other.
>I then used a dual RCA-to-1/8" plug, to go into the computer's microphone
>or line-in jack. Yes, I know it sounds convoluted, but I get (got) very
>good quality recordings from this.
The 3-pronged XLR is a balanced line (gets you enhanced noise immunity).
Jury-rigging it to an unbalanced RCA loses that benefit.
--
E. Riley Casey
Silver Spring MD
301-608-2180 ph
301-608-0789 fx
301-440-2923 shoe phone
Entertainment Sound Production ( http://www.ESPsound.com )
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