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Gear / Technical Help => Microphones & Setup => Topic started by: TXtaper on March 31, 2014, 11:45:59 PM
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Been using the onboards on the Zoom H4n for 3 or so years now. They're fine, for most of what I do, but my friend recently found his old external mic, and loaned it to me today, a Realistic stereo 33-1065. We were wanting to do a side by side comparison.
It has a left and right 1/8 (male)jacks, plugged into an adapter that squeezes them into 1 jack. Plugged that into the back of the Zoom, where the 1/8 (female) jack is. It ONLY received a left signal, even when I unplugged the adapter and only plugged the right mic jack into the Zoom. Still only registering a left signal. It did this both in stereo mode, and 4 channel mode.
The only other time I've used that back 1/8 jack was when plugging another friend's DAT recorder into the Zoom by way of plain old aux cable. In that case, the DAT was recorded in stereo, and in stereo mode, both left and right tracks recorded and responded accordingly. I'm sort of at a loss for where to begin trouble shooting, any suggestions? At first I thought it was the adapter, but even w/ the right mic plugged in, I'm only getting a left channel signal. Is it the Zoom's jack? Am I overlooking something critical here? Sort of new to the external experimentation game. (Also, it's very probably the mic has not been used since the mid 80s). Should I get some 1/8 to 1/4 adapters and plug them into the Zoom's 1/4 inputs?
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I use this mic as well, and it's a nice mic. Matter of fact, I just recorded a show Saturday night using it. I had Darktrain mod it for me and I love it.
See my original post here :
http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=165844.msg2071104#msg2071104
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I would get the needed adapters and use the other inputs.
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That is actually an amazing mic for the price point and great for rock shows.
Test all the alternatives to narrow down the issue, but it is quite possible the mic needs to be recabled if other things work correctly in the same jack in stereo. First I would try plugging in the left lead without adapters, then the right. You should get mono with both of them. If not (and other things plugged in that jack are stereo) then one of the cables may be bad. Worst case one of the mic elements may have failed (which can also happen with them). It's a process of narrowing down the possible failure points.
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Seems like the mic is working correctly from your description and you just need to connect it to the recorder in the right way.
The microphone output is two 1/8" mono plugs, one Left one Right. Correct?
1/8" mono plugs have two electrical conduction paths- Tip and Sleeve (TS)
The 1/8" input on the Zoom is a stereo input- it has three conduction paths- Tip/Ring/Sleeve (TRS)
The Sleeve connection is the ground connection and is shared between both microphone capsules.
The left signal connects to Tip, the right signal connects to Ring.
Regardless which mono lead from the mic you plug into the stereo jack, you should only see signal on the left channel of the recorder. The Ring connection in the jack to the right channel is simply shorted to ground by the longer Sleeve of the mono plug. Everything is working correctly.
You need a 'Y' cable with two 1/8" mono (TS) input jacks and one 1/8" stereo (TRS) output plug to use the 1/8" input jack on the Zoom for stereo recording.
Alternately, if the 1/4" input jacks on the Zoom are mono inputs, you could use two mono (TS) 1/8" jack to 1/4" mono (TS) plug adapters.
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^ Duh... I guess I still wasn't awake this morning. :facepalm:
He does need a stereo adapter that will take the two mono leads and provide a TRS (stereo) output. Zoom's have a single stereo minijack input.
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Gutbucket- thanks for the through explanation! That would also explain why, when I plugged only the right mic into my old Mac laptop's mic port, I again only got a left signal......
I'm thinking the adapter that was on here was a 2 stereo in to 1 stereo out.
Went searching for a Y cable today, no one has one, but the store is ordering one in. In the meantime, I'll try the 1/8 to 1/4 mono adapters I picked up. Have two shows tomorrow I'm taping, so we'll see how that goes.
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I have that same mic!