The Advantages of XLR Mic Cables Over Regular Mic Cables
Why choose an XLR mic cable? Learn how its three-conductor design gives you cleaner sound with less noise and a stronger signal than a regular mic cable.
The advantages of an XLR jack mic cable over a regular mic cable. In music and anything related to audio, microphones play a fairly important role because they are often used to record vocals, instruments, concerts and karaoke. There are many types of microphones, from carbon mics, liquid mics, fiber optic mics, ribbon mics, electret mics, condenser mics, laser mics, crystal mics, to cardioid mics.
Besides the mic's bundled cable, mics generally connect with an XLR cable. As it turns out, a mic with an XLR cable has several advantages over a mic with a regular cable. So what are the advantages of an XLR cable for a mic? Read the full explanation of the advantages of XLR cables for mics below.
Cleaner Sound With Less Noise
The first advantage of a mic with an XLR cable is that it produces cleaner sound with minimal noise. You can even prove it yourself with a sound test comparing a mic on a regular cable with a mic on an XLR cable. Place the mic stand 100 m from the audio mixer. What are the results? The sound from the XLR cable mic tends to be cleaner and nearly free of noise, while the regular cable mic is “crowded” with noise.
More Sensitive and Stronger Sound, Even at the Same Gain Level
If you compare the strength of the sound from an XLR jack mic with a regular cable mic, you will hear a clear difference in strength. The sound from the XLR cable mic tends to be more sensitive and stronger than that of the regular cable mic. Why is that?
An XLR cable has three layers or conductors: the shield or outer sheath, plus a positive signal wire and a negative signal wire. A regular cable, by contrast, has only two layers: the shield or outer sheath and a positive signal wire.
So why does an XLR cable use three layers? What does each wire do? Wire one and wire two serve as the positive and negative signal wires: wire one carries a wave going up and wire two carries a wave going down. The noise on wire one and wire two tends to be identical, and this noise can come from signal interference such as radio signals, cell phones, TV and other electrical signals.
Then, when the signal reaches processing inside the audio mixer, it is inverted. The waves that ran in opposite directions are flipped, which makes the resulting sound stronger. The noise that was identical on wire one and wire two cancels out, or reduces, because one of them is now inverted. So the resulting wave is pure, clear and has minimal noise.
Those are the advantages of an XLR jack mic cable over a regular mic cable. As it turns out, with an XLR cable the sound has minimal noise because the noise cancels itself out. The resulting vocals are also stronger, purer and clearer.
