3.5mm to XLR cables?

Are there any reasons why using a 3.5mm male to XLR male cable wouldn't work very well in putting audio from a laptop onto the building overhead? I can get a 25' length for $10 which would make life easier when using a laptop to receive a meetinghouse broadcast. I could use the crab, but I'd need an extension cable anyway.

I made my own with attenuation built in, no crab needed.

Yes they do work.

How did you build in the attenuation? How many dB is needed for this application?

aclawson wrote:Are there any reasons why using a 3.5mm male to XLR male cable wouldn't work very well in putting audio from a laptop onto the building overhead?

Depends on how it's wired. If it was "straight though", I think you'd be very disappointed in the results. It has to be a cable designed for what you want - to adapt a stereo line out to microphone level.

Personally, I like using the black crab box. Having the volume control and the ground lift switch to deal with hum is handy. Sure, the laptop also has a volume control, but it will appear in the video each time you adjust it.

rolandc wrote:I made my own with attenuation built in, no crab needed.

Yes they do work.

My stake president has asked for this exact thing, they want a 3.5mm jack installed at the pulpit controls to plug in an iPod/iPad to play prelude music when an organist/pianist is not available.

Any help that you can give will be TRULY appreciated.

Thank you

rl_albright wrote:they want a 3.5mm jack installed at the pulpit controls to plug in an iPod/iPad to play prelude music when an organist/pianist is not available.

Anything installed falls under the FM Group. It's not something a STS should be doing on their own. That will have to be done via the usual Physical Facilities contracts.

But look around. There might already be a input jack. It may or may not be a 3.5mm, but a RCA jack.

This set of instructions was written for my stake center, but it might be applicable to your chapel as well.

I have since told the stake president that this was not possible, and that if an iPod or other MP3 player is needed, that they would need to use the crab box which they have access to. They accepted this solution, and have worked with this box a few times since I posted the message.

I thought there was some sort of announcement that they were making an microphone receptacle that also had a 3.5mm jack below it. I believe they also said it would be deployed in new building and to a limited extent in older buildings.

Am I the only one that remembers this?

JW

john84601 wrote:Am I the only one that remembers this?

This one? XLR and Mini-input hardware

You should be able to get facilities to add a jack, although unfortunately it's generally at their discretion.

Note that an XLR input is mono and balanced, so it subtracts the two signal lines instead of adds them. And you should use a summing circuit to combine the stereo signals, so you should make sure the cable is designed specifically for this purpose. And you'd ideally want 30-40db attenuation. The crab box does all of this.

P.S. I think this should be moved to the meetinghouse a/v forum.