Unnecessary DI Box

[zpyder]

The mic has XLR and I am converting it to 1/4", hence pin 1 goes to shield, pin 2 goes to tip, and pin 3 is dropped to ground (shield) - common passive conversion from balanced to unbalanced from what I read.  pin 3 is is the negative or "cold" signal while 2 is the + or "hot".  we keep the hot and toss the cold.  could do it the other way, but then we're 180 degrees out of phase...

give it a go. you will see that it really does sound terrible when you do this.

i tested it with a xlr-> 1/4inch mic cable recently. even when plugged into my preamp low-z socket, my shures sounded like turd.

Well, I can't really comment on your results, but mine sounded just fine.  I played with all kinds of active crap to try and convert balanced XLR to 1/4" TRS without losing volume (buffers, etc.).  Failing that I just went ahead and wired an XLR jack to a 1/4" plug, wried as described above.  This actually sounded good!  I ran two mic's into my PA here on different channels, one straight in, the other through my XLR->1/4" adapter (just wires, no XFMR or circuit) and through the delay.  Making sure both channels were set the same, I checked em both.  They sounded close enough to identical to make me happy.  Then I'm thinking, well f*$% it, i'll just omit everything and just drop pin 3.  But better judgment told me this was only going to work in my relatively low-EMI bedroom, and only running 10 feet or so of cable - NOT on stage.

When it came up in September I was totally for it.
So build it already will ya! 

Yea yea yea... I know.  Well last night I went and bought two of the Audio Technica in-line impedance converters.  Cost me $25 for the pair, and they came with a free XLR jack and 1/4" plug each .  I will be ripping them apart hopefully today and adding them to my delay circuit here.  I will certainly post results!

I can imagine reading...
" Hi, I'm a tennor. What value output cap should I use in the XYZ phaser to give my voice that fat Pavarotti tone?"

hahahaha


cheers!
zpyder

[zpyder]

Update:

I just pulled apart one of the audio technica impedance matchers and took notes on the wiring.  Very simple.  Then i wired it up to the input of my testing switch box, which is running the rebote.  Then, using XLR jacks that I have here, created a XLR-male-to-XLR-male adapter for the output.  I put the other audio technica matcher at output and using the male-to-male adapter, ran the whole things into my PA.  Tested it the same way as I did before (one control mic directly into PA, the other through the jig) and it sounds acceptable to me.  Haven't hard-wired anything yet, but I'm very optimistic.  The only problem I have now is the switching.  I want to keep the unit directly XLR->XLR in bypass mode (not goign through any transformers).  I've been scratching my head but can't come up with any way to do this with a 3PDT, so now I am approaching the 4PDT option, since I would like to avoid CD4053 switching if at all possible.  I'm starting a new thread on this topic in case anyone has any clever ideas.

zpyder