Beachtek DXA-4....needed?

[Travis Johnson]

Has anyone had any experience using this XLR adapter here? If so tell me what you thought. I would like to utilize the XLR input along with not having the heavy plug from mogami cable hanging from the line in on my camera. I've read on some reviews that this device has a short life time and often the 1/8 jack will break. Also I'm wondering how much the audio quality will improve.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Travis Johnson

Has anyone had any experience using this XLR adapter here? If so tell me what you thought. I would like to utilize the XLR input along with not having the heavy plug from mogami cable hanging from the line in on my camera. I've read on some reviews that this device has a short life time and often the 1/8 jack will break. Also I'm wondering how much the audio quality will improve.

A simple adapter that converts from XLR to 1/8 such as it sounds like you have now unbalances the entire system and you lose some of the noise immunity advantages of a balanced mic cable. The Beach will provide a transformer conversion from balanced to unbalanced, preserving the advantages of the XLR cable ecept for the last little bit going from the Beach into your camera, thus giving you better noise rejection. 1/8 plugs in general are fragile - has nothing to do with the Beach's quality or that they don't use quality components, that's just the nature of the 1/8 beast. Since you would not have the weight hanging on the Beach's plug to your camera's mic jack that your current adapter cable has on it, it would actually be less likely to break than what you have now.

[Matthias Krause]

"Also I'm wondering how much the audio quality will improve"

It will not improve at all since the Beachtek is a passive device with no pre-amps.

[Travis Johnson]

Thanks for the replies.

So overall the Beachtek will improve the noise reduction and lifespan of my line in input on my cam, but not allow for improvement of sound quality?

I'm a somewhat n00b with audio so, whats the difference in balanced and unbalanced audio?

[Steve House]

While there are complex technical definitions that deal with impendances and such, it boils down to balanced carries the signal on three conductors - a signal positiive, a phase inverted signal negative, and a ground. When the signal is coupled into the device that uses it, the two signals paths are coupled together with the phase of the negative re-inverted again. That means that any noise picked up in route - called common-mode noise - is cancelled out. Unbalanced is typical consumer hi-fi two-conductor - one signal hot path plus ground.