I’m sure my old Canon XL1 has a low serial number because I picked it up before they became a rage. When it was new I marveled at the quality of the true stereo audio that was being recorded by a camcorders on board mic. I have been told many times the mic is a Sennheiser but I don’t know for sure. Now, after all these years, the camera it is going to my AV bone yard.

I searched, but if my question was asked it has probably been archived. So, how do I salvage the microphone from the XL1. All of my other condenser mics receive their phantom power either through the XLR cable from the mixer or a battery. This mic has a peculiar pin configuration. I am guessing the TRS 3.5 mini male pin delivers the audio and the sub mini TS pin delivers power.

What is the best way to adapt or rebuild that two pin set up for a standard XLR mic input. Is it possible? Most of my mixers only deliver 48 volt phantom power, I’m not sure what this mic takes?
And I don’t care if the end result is mono. Sometimes I place shotgun mics in a room just to give me a room noise track. If I can save this mic it would be OK for that, but those are usually long cable runs so they must be balanced.

Does this help?

http://www.coycypert.net/files/CANON%20DM-XL1.pdf

It's a 27Mb service manual, but judging from the front page, the microphone is an external unit easily removed, so it probably is not the same model. But if I found this, there may be a closer match out there.

Trevor, Thank you for digging that up.

Much of it is over my head but I was able to glean some information from it. Bad news. It looks to me like the Mic runs on 5 volts. Most of my mixers are 48v. My EFP mixer can be set for 12v but that is as low as I can go. I don't know how I could deal with the 5v requirement and the stereo wiring of the mic.

It is a fairly good mike but I am in over my head trying to convert it to an afterlife. What a shame, there must be thousands of these mics laying around in obsolete XL1s.

Thanks again for the information.

Steve

An electret condenser microphone.. and normally only require 5V (or less) of bias current. A lot of (XLR) mics are not 'true' condensers but have a built-in transformer to use higher voltage Phantom Pwr.
Sorry, it's likely not worth the money or time to salvage.

Rick, yes, that's the way it looks. And judging from the schematics in the manual that Trevor dug up the circuit to regulate the 5v is built into the camera not the mic. It was a good thought, but beyond basic wiring and soldering I am over my head anyway.

Steve

It's eminently do - able to build an interface box for the XL 1/ s mic, I did it with mine as I wanted to use the mic on a boom pole.

The 5 volts - a 9 volt battery, connector, power switch and very basic 3 lead 5 volt regulator sorted that.

The hardest bit was finding a 2.5 mm and 3.5 mm socket that would sit close enough to one another to mate with the mic plug, that can be tricky and from memory required a small mod to one or the other to get them close enough.

In order to make it workable I bought a super el cheapo boom pole and screwed the box to it at the mic end so that the mic simply plugged in when mounted in its clip.

The signal lead was captive at the box end and terminated in a 3 pin XLR plug, which mated with a 3 pin socket held in the mic holder, with a flying lead from that to the 3.5 mm [ground/ left/ right] socket on the camera (this was so that I didn't have a 3.5 mm plug on the end of 5 metres of cable - one trip and bye bye plug & socket!).

If you're never going to use the mic on a XL1/ s again, I'd be tempted to dispose of the mics current plug arrangement entirely and come up with something better, maybe a 4 pin XLR (ground/ left/ right/ +5 volts) and put the box on the camera hot shoe, with two flying leads out for the twin XLR I/P's on the new camera.

To be absolutely frank, given that the O/P's from the mic aren't balanced (even having gone through all the pissing about above) I'd have to say it's all probably not warranted, given the relatively modest cost of a half decent new mic.


CS

I see the mics being sold on eBay for $75 and up. Someone out there must think they're worthwhile, as a direct replacement if nothing else.

Ya know, "converting" the mic sounds like an interesting and fairly simple project, and Chris Soucy has already confirmed what I suspected about the electrical details.

If you really like the mic that much, and you're not in a hurry, I might be able to collaborate with you on this. But you'd have to weigh Chris's comments and decide if that's the direction you really want to take. Let me know... either here or via EMail.

You guys want to go for it, just holler................

I can give you photos's of the rig, box content and just about anything you want.

Hey, you could start a small business doing them, though doubt there's a heap of money to be made at it.

They're not bad mic's as things go, just useless mounted on a camera, which is why I decided to move mine to a boom pole in the first place.

Interestingly, the first trial was at Kew Gardens in London, with my missus doing the honours with the boom - amazing, the bloody tourists tip toed around us as if they'd be shot if they didn't, magic!


CS

Thanks, Chris.

Hey, you could start a small business doing them,

Yes, very small, I'd think. ;-)

It sounds elementary: a project box, a battery holder, a toggle switch, maybe an LED, a 7805 regulator, two filter caps, two 3.5mm stereo jacks, and one 2.5mm mono jack. Did I miss anything? Oh yeah, gaff tape somewhere, just for good measure.

I would just need to know accurate centre-to-centre spacing on the connectors.

I guess IF I had one of these mics and IF I really liked it, I'd do the mod for myself. So I might be tempted to do it just to prove how simple it is. "As time permits," of course...

Do you think people are really throwing away these cameras? If I were going to retire one, I'd put it on eBay and try to get a few bucks.

Filter caps redundant, quite frankly, as it's battery powered. The bigest improvement would be moving from a 9 volt (PP3?) to a 12 volt camera battery, so much smaller, if you can but find a holder for it.

The mic only draws something like 2 milliamps, so a 12 volt camera battery should last ages.

A power LED is a must (it'll burn more power than the mic!), I didn't put one in as I had room problems and it was a complete pain without it.

Yeah, well, my XL 1s is heading for land fill sometime soon, alas.

About 6 years ago I had it on the back seat of the car, and had to do a sudden stop. Into the footwell it went.

From that moment on it simply wouldn't focus on anything beyond 70% zoom, and I had a choice - fix it or get a XH - A1 (very late getting here to NZ).

I went XH.

The XL1s has been doing nothing but taking up storage space all these years and won't ever work (properly) again.

After the XL bit the dust I didn't bother with the XL mic, as I bought Senny balanced mics for the XH, so the entire rig has been superceded, that's just the way it goes.

Give me a shout if you need any other info on the interface, but anyone who can rattle off 7805 has probably got it sussed.


CS

Greg,
Your on, lets do it. Just so it does not go to wast. I will send you a PM with contact info.

The XL1 is junk. The audio pods scream white noise and the fire wire port has not worked in ages. Over a year ago I sent it to Canon for repair and they shipped it back untouched with a note that said they no longer support the camera. I am keeping the lens because I also have two XL2s I use for back up cameras.

I do not need to put this mic on my boom, I have a Senny for that. I earn my living doing corporate work. That includes lots of ballroom shooting. Quite often I put a mic under the stage pointed at the audience and on its own track for audience response and room noise. I can always use an extra mic for that.

Thank You,

Steve

Chris,

Yeah, I've seen a few 7805s in my day. (Actually, I've seen a lot of 12AX7s in my day... sigh.)

Do you have any reason to believe that it really needs to be regulated +5.0? After all, three fresh alkalines would give you 4.5 to 4.6 volts, without wasting any current on a regulator.

Thanks again.

---

Steven,

Before I'd open the trash bin, I'd try eBay just for kicks. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and that cam was expensive in its day. Of course if you keep the lens, it would be worth less. I'll tell ya what... if it's not worth anything, you eBay it, then send me the $$$. ;-)

Meanwhile, waiting for your info.

I got the 5V info from the PDF repair manual posted above. I could be wrong but that is how it looked to me.

Steve

Steve,

Yes, I see "AUDIO 5V" comes from IC805 regulator on the AUDIO PCB. So I guess it's safest to regulate it. I'm not so much concerned about the $.25, as the extra current drain from the battery, which will reduce the battery life. Oh well, that's progress.

As promised, photos...........

Don't know whether the manual mentioned previous has this information, so, if not, here it is:

3.5 mm plug/ socket: tip - ground, ring 1&2 - left and right signal, can't remember which is which

2.5 mm plug/ socket: tip - +5 volts, ring - not connected

And yes, there is a 7805 shoehorned into that case, but as it's only the size of a very small pea, pratically invisible.


CS

PS: Note the artistic use of gaffer tape to pad the XLR connector out to be a tight fit in the XL1s mic holder!

3.5 mm plug/ socket: tip - ground, ring 1&2 - left and right signal, can't remember which is which

2.5 mm plug/ socket: tip - +5 volts, ring - not connected

Chris, thanks for the photos. Looks like a respectable job.

I would expect the following connections:

TIP=left, RING=right, SLEEVE=ground. That's fairly standard for stereo mics (also headphones etc). I'm a bit puzzled by your designation of "ring 1 & 2" as a normal 3.5mm stereo plug has only one ring.

I'm also a bit surprised that they use the ground on the audio jack for power ground also, given that the jumper inside the camera (between circuit boards) uses five separate conductors. I will double check this before building.

By the way, can you give me a very exact centre-to-center dimension between the two plugs? That's something I don't know.

Thanks again.

Chris, Thank you for the pictures and information! The most difficult part over here would be finding the EverReady 9V with the black cat on it from the sixty's!

Greg & Chris,

That is not 3 pin XLR.....looks like 5 pin DMX? Could we combine the left/right channels and go mono so we don't need the extra pins?

Steve

Guess I'll leave it to one of you guys to check out those connection conundrums, my memory is pretty damn hazy, as it was at least 9 years ago.

Yep, they used signal ground as power ground, that I do remember, no biggie.

Pin denotion, well, they could (and did) basically make it up as they went, it being proprietry, no one else was getting a look in on this one, so they could put any damn signal wherever they wanted.

Best way to check it is to put two unshrouded plugs into the camera sockets and crank up the old multimeter, best way to do it, unless you have the schematics.

Well, it was sold as an "XLR", worked as an "XLR" and looks (to me) like an "XLR", so WTF, it's an "XLR".

I'll dig out the micrometer (NOT joking) and let you know the dimensions, centre to centre. I do know I had a devil of a time trying to find components to butt up against another to get there, and even then, the plug gets a bit out of shape in the process.

Yeah, interesting battery, still being sold in the UK circa 2003, hey, you use what you can get.


CS

Steven:

I was planning to use either one 3.5mm stereo jack, or two RCA jacks, for the output from the adapter box. Either way, you could then use a standard cable to connect from the box to any unbalanced audio input. I think a 3-pin XLR would be confusing, because that normally implies a balanced signal. Since this will be unbalanced, we might as well use a connector that's normally used for that purpose.

If you think you would sometimes want a mono signal, it would probably be simpler for me to use two RCA jacks. Then if you want to combine channels, you could use a common RCA Y cable to combine the channels.

If Chris is right about non-standard pinouts on the mic's pigtail, then I would need to have the mic here to be sure the box works correctly. But the schematic (on p. 177 of the manual) shows standard connections: TIP = left, RING = right, SLEEVE = ground. So I feel fairly safe building the box to those specs.

Greg, Lets go with the TRS 3.5 output. Did you get the e-mail I sent yesterday?

Chris, Yes, there are so damn many audio cables, and each one with it's own acronym depending on who you talk to. This is the way I see it. Cables fail a lot, especially when we are building a complex AV systems with a couple of miles worth of cable spaghetti at the tech table. So.....any cable in the system that fails instantly becomes the "WTF" cable. Same thing with mixers, anyone that has ever run live audio reinforcement knows that every mixer has an unlabeled button on it. It is the SUCK button, if you touch the SUCK button then your work sucks and your entire audience will know it instantly. Been there, Done that!

Steve

Steve,

Yes, I got one EMail from you, and sent one EMail reply.

The mail must have gone to the account that is down, makes sense, that is the address registered here, sorry.

Use my back up corporateshow at gmail . com