using xlr instead of a 1/4"

[funkbass187]

i was looking into using dragonfly's layout for the 4 channel mixer, could i sub in an xlr jack instead of 1/4" without having problems. also, could i just continue the pattern of the layout to add more inputs to it?

here's the link in case it matters.
http://aronnelson.com/gallery/album20/SOUNDCARD_4_CHANNEL_PREAMP_VERO_CORRECT

thanks for the help

[John Lyons]

The problem is that there is a differernce between a 1/4" jack  and XLR. XLR is ballanced and usually runs at either microphone level and low impedance or Line level. Both these standards are totally different than 1/4" guitar level which is high impedance. the mixer is set up for line level unbalanced. What you would use this for is a CD player, tape deck, things like that. Line level inputs unbalanced. You CAN run XLR line level inputs but there is no advantage because the balancing + and - signals aren't taken advantage of  by this mixer. Not that it's not a decent mixer....  It's all very confusing huh?  Your not alone, there's a lot to it.

John

[d95err]

You can sub XLR jacks. It would work fine. Just connect the '-' pole of the XLR to ground. It would be the same as using an XLR to (mono) tele converter at the end of each XLR cable.

However, as Basicaudio said, it won't take advantage of the balanced nature of the signal.

[funkbass187]

thanks for the replies... so, are there any other layouts out there that are designed to have separate xlr and 1/4 inch inputs?

[sir_modulus]

Not all that many that I know of, as mainly it's DIY recording guys who do this, and their direct inputs are DI'd usually (like the redundancy there?).

A good thing to look at is a nice preamp like this:
http://sound.westhost.com/projects-2.htm

Couple that with a nice guitar preamp that brings your guitar to line level (a simple DI circuit will do that), and you're good to go.

Cheers,

Nish