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Cow newbie has problem with starquad cables
Hi people,
I have made quad cables for a client from Canare L4E6S cable and Neutrik XLR connectors. When I tested the cables by hooking them up to my Mackie with a Marshall MXL 2000 mic, they were fine. However, when hooked up to his camera (a Panasonic 100, I believe), they hum like hell. Regular cheap store-bought mic cables work fine with the same camera.
This isn’t my first time at the rodeo, I’ve made many an audio cable in my day, and consider myself reasonably savvy to wiring conventions etc. I’ve researched this online and can’t find any reference to any other method of wiring up a quad cable other than the regular one.
If anyone can shed any light on his apparent anomaly, I’d be most grateful. It’s making me crazy. Frankly, I suspect the camera, even though the regular 2 core and screen cables seem to work with it. But, being an audio guy rather than a camera guy, I’m not totally confident in that call. All help appreciated.
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3 Replies
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That’s probably the 6VDC that the camera’s putting out to the mic – think bias voltage.
I don’t know the values, but I know that Tecnec makes some cables that have blocking resistors/capacitors in the XLR shell.
Wolf
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Welcome to the Cow Audio Forum Jim,
Does this camera have XLR inputs? “When hooked up to the camera”, when what is hooked up to the camera?
If the camera has XLR inputs, I don’t think it’s bias voltage. I’ve only seen bias voltage on 1/8″ audio inputs. I have seen phantom power cause problems when it’s on at the camera and the camera is being fed by a mixer instead of a mic requiring phantom power.
If you’re trying to feed the camera from a mixer, be sure the camera phantom supply is off.
Regards,
Ty Ford
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Jim,
Can you get the exact model of his camera for us? That would let us find specifications on it.
You also don’t specify what types of connectors you used (as we both know, Neutrik makes many). Did you make an XLR-XLR or an XLR-TRS mini?
Star-quad is great cable, but it is only really meant for short runs in recording studios that needed to be extra RF-resistant. Once you start getting further away from the inputs there would likely be some loss in the high frequencies.
Wolf
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