XLR Mic Cable As A Speaker Cable?

[smit6577]

Right now I'm looking for ways to work around not having some cables that are better than others. My amp has a balanced line out which brings me to my question: should I be able to use my xlr mic cable to connect the balanced line out on the amp to the input of another amp? Would I be running any risk of damaging the cable by doing this? (I'm using a 1/4 male adapter so one end of the xlr cable looks like a guitar cable.)

[aclarson]

First off, this is a signal cable, not a speaker cable, which goes between an amp and a speaker. Signal cables are shielded, speaker cables aren't.

As far as using your cable in the way you describe, this output on your amp is at line level, and is intended for running into a mixer or interface or some other source which is designed to receive a line level signal. If you're running into a PA style power amp, it should work fine.

But I assume you're probably trying to run it into another guitar amp input. This is made to take a guitar level signal. The signal would pass, but would likely overdrive the input of the second guitar amp and sound bad. If you have parallel inputs on amp 1, you could run a guitar cable from one of those to amp 2 input, and that would work. Otherwise, you need to split the guitar signal and run to both amps directly.

You COULD use a reamp box which is made for converting from line level to guitar level, but this would likely be more expensive and lower quality than just splitting the guitar signal before the inputs.

Hope this helps,

-Aaron-

[smit6577]

Thanks I did find it helpful. Needless-to-say I'm somewhat new to audio production related equipment arranging.

[smit6577]

Speaking of which, I'm looking to get another version of pro tools. I have pro tools LE 7.0 and want to buy the pro tools LE 8 upgrade . I only have an Mbox2 for my interface, so would that be enough for me to use pro tools LE 8 if I bought it or does that version require different hardware?