Cables; Unbalanced - Yamaha AW2816 Manual

Cables

Once the microphone has taken the acoustic sound wave and converted it into an electrical
signal, the electrical signal must be sent to the mixing console. In order to do this the microphone
must be connected to the mixing console with a cable. There are many different types of cable
so this next section is devoted to various cable types, their construction, and how they are
commonly used.
For our purposes we will look at two basic types of cables. They are balanced and unbalanced.
Unbalanced Cables
Unbalanced cables are cables that have one wire and a shield around this wire.
Construction of an Unbalanced Cable
Unbalanced cables are generally used for connecting guitars, keyboards, or drum machines to the
mixing console. Cassette decks, consumer CD players, and mini disc players also will have
unbalanced outputs and therefore unbalanced cables will need to be used in order to connect it to
the mixing console.
The most common types of connectors used with unbalanced cables are phone plugs (also
referred to as ¼") and phono (also referred to as RCA).
On the AW2816 the only unbalanced inputs are the Hi-Z input on channel 8 and the Stereo
Digital In. The only unbalanced outputs are the Omni Outs.
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