[vox-tech] microphone

[Mark K. Kim]

On Wed, Jun 20, 2007 at 04:31:30PM -0700, Jimbo wrote:
> Greetings:
> Went to frys and bought a microphone however it doesn't work on a pc.  A 
> pc mic works just fine.  I guess that it wasn't designed to work on a pc 
> (it is a shure 8900 brand mic).
> 
> I see why it doesn't...the regular pc mic has 2 separators in the jack 
> and the pro mic has just one and it is spaced differently( but the same 
> size jack).

I think you may have that backwards... usually professional mics have
three conductors (2 separators).  They use the extra conductor to carry
the inverted audio signal and use it to cancel out the noise in the
non-inverted audio signal.  (They call this a "balanced" cable, as
opposed to the unbalanced cables that we normally use in the computer
and home audio.  Wikipedia has a nice description of how balanced audio
works if it interests anyone.)

You have a few options here.  Since your mic (according to one of the
websites I checked) comes with XLR to balanced 1/8" connector, you can
get an XLR to unbalanced 1/8" connector to replace the connector that
the mic comes with, which is sort of expensive.  More practical solution
would be to get a balanced female 1/8" to unbalanced male 1/8"
converter.  Radioshack folks would have no idea what that means but any
music store staff should know, and although I've never used such
converter I'm sure it exists out there.  A slightly dirty trick would be
to get a stereo female 1/8" to 2 mono male 1/8" splitter and use only
one of the 1/8" mono male connectors.

I'm not a music aficionado (compared to some people) so someone may want
to check my logic so Jimbo doesn't go off wasting $$ unnecessarily.

-Mark