XLR to 1/4 inch: cable or adapter?

A

AllTheCoolNamesAreTaken

Silver Member
After ten years of waiting and planning I finally have a drum room! And I went to set up to record my drums only to find ... I have a bunch of XLR to XLR cables, and my Presonus FireStudio has mainly 1/4-inch inputs.

So I can either use the cables and a XLR-to-1/4inch adapters, or just buy XLR-to-1/4inch cables. The adapters are cheaper but I'm worried that using an adaptor might introduce noise into the line.

What would you recommend? Straight cables or adapters?
 
Im no expert but i linked my roland pm-30 to another 15" amped pa with a xlr to double 1/4 male.cable off amazon and it was pretty cheap
 
PresonusFirestudio_01-.KU.CeAA8_nwUiBMTWpW1b_92FeDqAc6.jpg


is this the same kind of firestudio you have?
 
No i have a yamaha ead 10 .one of my apmed pa speakers has xlr ports .maybe someone else can help because how many cables you would need .looks expensive
 
AllTheCoolNamesAreTaken said:
I have a bunch of XLR to XLR cables, and my Presonus FireStudio has mainly 1/4-inch inputs.
...
What would you recommend? Straight cables or adapters?
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If an interface has pure 1/4 inch inputs these are most likely line level inputs not suitable to work with microphones. Mic inputs are always XLR. So whatever adapter you are using it will probably not work very well. You need an interface with the appropriate number of mic preamps with XLR to get your recordings done.
Which interface exactly do you use? The one pictured above has eight XLR ins which should be sufficient for basic drumrecording. You can see that the inputs have combo jacks to use with XLR or TRS. If the eight channels are not enough for your plans you can expand the mic inputs via ADAT lightpipe and an external Mic pre with ADAT output (the cheapest being the Behringer ADA8200).
 
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Bah, I have a Firestudio Mobile. It's a discontinued model that has six line-level inputs (1/4") on the back, two mic/instrument inputs on the front. I just expected that I could run my 5 XLR drum mics to the line inputs and have no issues, but if that's not the case I guess I'll have to look into finding the right hardware.
 
AllTheCoolNamesAreTaken said:
Do you know of a compromise between the mini one that I have (Firestudio Mobile) and this horking beast? I'm sure I could find uses for all those XLR inputs but I really would like to avoid buying a rack just to hold this thing.
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well, you could do what mike johnston does, he does all of his lesson recording useing jsut two microphones, one placed about front of the drums, and one directly above the kit?

if you dont want a rackmount interface, look into a zoom livetrak 12 or related interface, as theyre built more like mixers than rackmounts :)
 
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