Mic

Hi Guys,

I’d really appreciate some help regarding mics.

I’m purchasing a Rhode M3 phantom powered mic. Do I need an XLR to dual phono, or will a XLR to single photo?

DELETED BY ADMIN - no need for such bad attitude

The M3 is, as far as I can tell, not a stereo source. This means that a cable terminating in a regular single XLR plug, or TS plug, should work fine. If you intend to plug it into a mixer, either one should do fine provided that the mixer could give you phantom power - or of course that you had a battery for the mic.

Short version: single connection is fine. One XLR plug at the end of the cable is what you should expect to see. Alternatively, a single TS plug.

Thanks dude!

Other guys first reply? What the?

You're welcome.

Most microphones are mono devices. There are a few specialised exceptions, usually with fancy tricks around stereo imaging, but as a general rule, what comes from a mic is a single audio channel.

That said, many vocal effects units will give you two channels out, because they're capable of using stereo effects such as pingpong delay.

The typical plug at the end of microphone cables is the XLR, but you can also get them with TS plugs, which makes them a bit more flexible, especially in the case of dynamic microphones that don't need phantom power.

Really, phantom power is the limitation here, but given that you're dealing with an MPC Live (to judge by your signature) you probably already know that you don't have XLR connections or phantom power, which is why I'm assuming that you'll be plugging it into a mixer - and even some pretty affordable Behringer mixers give you XLR sockets and phantom power, so that seems like the plan to me. Right now, to the best of my knowledge, only the MPC X and the Force offer phantom power and combo sockets.

Hope this helps.

(And on a peripheral note, the Force doesn't suck any more, so if you're looking for an electronic studio friend, try swiping right on the Force.)

It has battery powered phantom, so was hoping to plug directly into the phono jacks. Do you think it will be okay?

OK, this is where it gets a little weirder.

You keep saying "phono jacks", but those are generally how you plug in a turntable. As a general rule, you won't get a microphone cable terminating in a phono jack. There's no law against it, and if you're handy with a soldering iron you could sort it out yourself, but it would be unusual, because of all sorts of reasons best summarised as: mics don't talk phono.

The normal choice, in this context, would be to put the microphone through some kind of mic pre-amp, to bring microphone levels up to line level, or through a vocal effects unit (such as the Boss VE-500), or through a mixer with an XLR input. You can absolutely plug a mic directly into the line input with a quarter inch jack at the end of your cable (it should hurt neither mic nor MPC) but the unamplified signal from the mic will be very low compared to what the line level socket expects.

I know that this hurts, but I would, in your position, make a little choice. You can get a cheap preamp, like the SE Electronics Dynamite, which is about $100. You could get a small mixer such as the Behringer Xenyx Q502USB which will boost your mic signal for you, for around $60. You could get a vocal effects unit like the TC Helicon VoiceTone T1 for well under $200. All of these will boost your signal for you. You see, if you just plug the mic directly into a line-level jack you'll be dozens of dB too low, and you'll lose a lot of dynamic range trying to boost everything inside the MPC Live. Mic level signals are way lower than line level, which is what the Live offers you.

But I want to tell you something else: you just spent good money on a good microphone, and on a good MPC. You want your vocals to sound hot. This means doing it right, and that means cracking the wallet for a bit more quality. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I'd actually say that you'd get better results with an iffy microphone and a high quality effects unit, than the other way around. Consider something like the Boss VE-500. Yes, it's spendy, but it will sound good. And it will get you the right levels so that you can deliver a nice signal to your MPC and chop what you need.

I hope that this helps. The fact is that the MPC Live wasn't designed with studio duties in mind, rather than portable beatmaking. If you want a studio master, the MPC X is the beast with the power to do it all, including sucking in mic level signals. Alternatively, the Force can do it too, which is the direction that I took. And yes, just yesterday I took some vocal samples from a cheap dynamic microphone direct into my Force, and they sounded good.

But the Force doesn't have a battery. Maybe that's a deal-breaker for you.

Sorry guys, I’m actually meaning to say line in… So, XLR female to singular 3.5 line in.

Will this work, or will I have the same issues?

Thanks for all answers, I really do appreciate it

XLR female to quarter inch jack line in (6.35mm) is what you probably mean. 3.5mm is the 1/8 inch jack you usually see on laptops and media players, or eurorack modular.

It will ... kind of work? You'll get a really, really tiny signal in, dozens of dB too low. This is a problem, and will get you a terrible result, which is what the pre-amps would solve. Really, this is the kind of signal level that gets lost in noise.

So don't do that. It would be a tragic waste of a good microphone and a solid recording device.

Instead, just go for XLR to XLR, get a device that takes XLR in and boosts the signal to line level, then an XLR to 6.35mm cable or two (as appropriate to the device) from that, to put into your Live. If you grab an appropriate TC Helicon or Boss or similar vocal processor, you'll even get things like reverb and pitch correction into the setup as a bonus, as well as boosting the output signal to line level.

You know, I just realised something.

HuGO, your questions tell me that you are not an experienced guy with mics and microphone recording, on this platform or any other. There's nothing wrong with this - we all have to start somewhere. But I'm going to suggest that you start a bit cheaper and easier, so that you can get the chops that you need for cheap. A lot of people are going to scream and wave their fists about this advice because of their personal morality and audio engineering high horses, but if you haven't yet spent cash on the M3, here's what I would tell you to do:

- Get a cheap Behringer dynamic microphone. They're rock solid clones of other dynamic mics, they work fine, they sound OK, and they're cheap as chips. Consider the XM1800S, for example. Get an XLR - XLR cable for it.

- Get a Behringer Xenyx 502, which isn't much more expensive. Get a couple of TS-TS, 6.35mm cables for it.

There you are. Use the effects in the Live that you already have. The mixer will get your microphone level up to line level, and you can even plug in an additional synth or something that you want to record, because why not? $100, and you have vocals in, and a microphone that isn't so delicate that the first time some wannabe Eminem does a mic drop, that it breaks.

Then more importantly: dig around for a copy of Mike Senior's Recording Secrets for the Small Studio and Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio and read them cover to cover. It will raise your game. And you will sound better with that crappy mic than many so-called experts with big internet genitalia and half a dozen misunderstood cliches in their heads.

JohnClodVanDarn wrote:DELETED BY ADMIN - no need for such bad attitude

This guy again....

HuGO wrote:Sorry guys, I’m actually meaning to say line in… So, XLR female to singular 3.5 line in.

Will this work, or will I have the same issues?

Thanks for all answers, I really do appreciate it

You can do this if you have a , mic pre-amp or mixer (with phantom power) or a device like TC Helicon where you can plug in the mic in the big XLR input of the TC Helicon device, and the output will be stereo jackplug which can go into the line in of the mpc, just make sure the device between your mic and your mpc is phantom powered (i assume you use a mpc live or mpc one cause they dont have a direct xlr microphone input)
I dont have mic currently but when i do i will buy one in combination with a tc helicon or similar device so i can plug it in the mpc live and get a stereo output.
But in general microphone's are a mono signal....

Thanks everyone, although I’m a musician I’m not technically trained by any means. I really do appreciate all your answers/guidance… Much love