Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
So I have a couple of questions about this. Seems like lots of people are doing it. I tried it myself and was overcome, with the horrific noise levels.
I tried running unshielded twisted pair to the +ve and -ve terminals on the monitor, then connected it to the hot and cold on one of my mic channels. Being unshielded it picked up way to much noise. So;
1. Do I wire it up via the connectors with shielded wire and just leave the shield unhooked at the speaker end?
2. Should I bypass the crossover and make connections directly to the woofer?
I was thinking if I liked it, I had a spare woofer I could just mount in a box and put a male XLR on it so I can just hook it up like any other mic.
Anyone have opinions?
I tried running unshielded twisted pair to the +ve and -ve terminals on the monitor, then connected it to the hot and cold on one of my mic channels. Being unshielded it picked up way to much noise. So;
1. Do I wire it up via the connectors with shielded wire and just leave the shield unhooked at the speaker end?
2. Should I bypass the crossover and make connections directly to the woofer?
I was thinking if I liked it, I had a spare woofer I could just mount in a box and put a male XLR on it so I can just hook it up like any other mic.
Anyone have opinions?
-
- steve albini likes it
- Posts: 361
- Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2004 8:57 pm
- Location: Portland, OR
Re: Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
If you use shielded wire, you solder the shield with the (-) cable lead to the (-) terminal on the speaker.
-
- steve albini likes it
- Posts: 361
- Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2004 8:57 pm
- Location: Portland, OR
Re: Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
I would bypass the crossover. The speaker will not pick up high frequencies anyways, due to the size of it's diaphram and the inability for the low energy of higher frequencies to vibrate it at higher revolutions per unit time..
-
- zen recordist
- Posts: 7515
- Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2004 10:30 pm
- Location: Bloomington IL
- Contact:
Re: Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
I wired a woofer to a 1/4" male and use a DI from there.
- psychicoctopus
- buyin' a studio
- Posts: 890
- Joined: Wed May 14, 2003 3:01 am
- Location: Austin, TX
Re: Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
wow, that's like 8 ohms into around 1,000,000 ohms. talk about an impedance difference. heck, if it sounds good.drumsound wrote:I wired a woofer to a 1/4" male and use a DI from there.
Armed with seven rounds of space doo-doo pistols
Re: Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
Would you not be able to consider the woofer, like a capsule to be a balanced source?cetanorak wrote:If you use shielded wire, you solder the shield with the (-) cable lead to the (-) terminal on the speaker.
-
- audio school graduate
- Posts: 22
- Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2003 5:08 pm
- Location: San Francisco, CA
Re: Wiring a monitor as a kick mic.
I'd think you'd be OK if, as you suggested, you left shield lifted at the speaker but landed it at the console. As long as it sees ground at one end, the noise it intercepts will drain to ground and stay out of your signal. The only reason why shield is always landed at both ends in a mic cable is that condenser mics need ground to reference +/- 48v which is travelling on the pair... Bypassing the crossover would definitley be a good thing too, as the inductors in a typical passive crossover would probably pick up some noise in such a low level scenario. Anybody ever gotten this to sound good? I've been meaning to try it myself...
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests