Review on 🔌 Enhance Sound Performance with SoundTools XLR Sniffer/Sender Microphone Cable Remote End Cable Tester by Star Bell

The SoundTools "XLR Sniffer/Sender" is what you need if you deal a lot with microphone (or other) cables with 3-pin XLR connectors work on the ends. One of the most frustrating aspects of routing cables, setting up mics, testing and troubleshooting the entire setup is trying to figure out what is causing cable issues. Is it the cable, the phantom power from the preamp/mixer, or the mic itself? And if it's the cable, what's the problem? There are quite a few XLR cable testers on the market, but most of them are quite large and/or expensive. This sniffer/transmitter is the smallest I've found and it actually works well enough to be of obvious use. It's also relatively inexpensive. The tool consists of two parts, the so-called "SENDER" and "SNIFER". The TRANSMITTER is a black anodized aluminum tube. It measures 4 inches long and about 3/4 inch in diameter. It has an XLR jack on one end, a recessed on/off switch on the other that glows green when turned on, and inside is an A23 12V alkaline battery commonly used in car remote controls. Remote starter and garage door opener. Note that even with the power switch on, the power button will only light up if the SENDER is connected to a cable with a SNIFFER or microphone at the other end. A higher battery voltage is required because this transmitter is basically phantom power. It can even be used alone to power microphones if you connect it to the microphone with a Y-cable. The main purpose of this tool is to provide power to one end of the cable under test to allow the SNIFFER to do its job on the other end of the cable. However, if the cable under test is already connected to phantom power, you do not need to use SENDER. The actual tester is SNIFFER. It's also a black anodized aluminum tube, in this case with an XLR connector on one end and a set of three small LED lights on the other; As with the recessed SENDER power button, the SNIFFER LEDs are recessed to protect them. The SNIFFER is 2-3/4" long and the same diameter as the TRANSMITTER. The LEDs are labeled A, B, C and have no direct relation to the three pins of the XLR connector or the corresponding cable. Instead, they must You use a chart to understand what the LED patterns are trying to tell you about the cable under test. The tool comes with a high quality colored label that has an adhesive backing and can be taped onto the SNIFFER tube, or it can be placed on top of something else or stuffed in a tool box etc. I found that since the label has a thin white border on the black label and the sniffer has a black finish I wanted to take a pair of scissors and trim the white border Before sticking the label on SNIFFER It will look much better SNIFFER can be used without a TRANSMITTER if the cable under test is connected to a working phantom power source such as a microphone connected to a preamp or mixer. You can quickly test this cable or test the s series cables in a snake cable. You can use it to check wire continuity on cables, solder joints, or the XLR connectors themselves, as well as verifying that the phantom power on the cable is correct. SNIFFER uses eight LED patterns related to nine cable faults. . The LEDs can be either green or red (if you insert the TRANSMITTER battery the wrong way round, the SNIFFER will still work, but the red and green colors will be reversed). If all three LEDs are green then the cable and its connectors are OK and the phantom power is OK (if you have a TRANSMITTER on the other end then of course only test the cable, not the phantom power). Aside from the solid green LED state ("All Green, Wires Clean"), the other eight patterns would be meaningless without the accompanying table. Examples: A=off, B=off, C=off. means that contact 1 is open. that pin 3 is open. The same LED circuit is used for both "Toggle pins 1 and 2" and "Close pins 1 and 2". Similarly, "pins 2 and 3 swapped" and "pins 2 and 3 shorted" share a common pattern. Each of the other errors listed have separate LED circuits. I tested all possible cable faults with a purpose-built test fixture. This allowed me to quickly simulate a correctly connected XLR cable with all the possible opens, closes and swaps. At the same time, it became clear that SNIFFER cannot point out ALL possible cable errors. It is intended for failures that are likely but not catastrophic. For example, it points to TWO pins shorted, but if all THREE pins are shorted, you get the same LED circuit, which means "pin 1 open" as the chart says, and you will get these circuit when you disable SNIFFER from the network. Cable or simply turn off the phantom power (or SENDER). However, in real situations, the patterns are reasonable and will detect and indicate likely cable faults. a few complaints about this product. First, I believe the LED circuit should be reserved for the off state (or phantom power off) with all three LEDs off, and NOT used to indicate "pin 1 open". The other is that while all but one of the LED circuits give good LED brightness, one particular circuit (open to 'pin 3') gives the LED 'A' a very faint red color. I figured my SNIFFER must be defective, so I contacted SoundTools and let them know. They replaced the SNIFFER, but this replacement also has the same very low-power LED. The same LED is bright red or bright green in other templates, so I don't attribute this issue to a bad LED, in this case it's more of a bad design. that when this tool was being developed someone just started connecting LEDs in different arrays until they had templates for most of the errors and then never finished or perfected the design. But I don't want to be too hard on them; At this point of the prince and with such a small device, having a much more complex design is impractical. In an ideal world, a SNIFFER would have its own power supply and a small logic circuit or even a tiny microprocessor, and it could do anything with the LEDs to indicate all sorts of errors without resorting to a diagram. But that's not what this tool is, and I don't think the developers intended this level of functionality. They set out to create a small, robust, and inexpensive cable tester, which they did. I would rate it higher, except for the weak red LED issue mentioned above; They should have worked a little more on this design to avoid this situation, or at least indicated on the diagram that a low LED is expected in this case.