Re: X32 Discussion
Hi Robert,
The latch on the XLR female receptacle is not easily removable, and I'd strongly advise against removing it. Most obviously, you'd likely void your warranty, but also you'd lose the assurance of a properly connected XLR cable. The last thing I would want to troubleshoot (having to go behind the gear and dig around cables) is knowing there's a possibility that a cable came unplugged.
This is pretty obviously a religious issue.
In the "Let the XLR's Be Free" camp, we believe the cables can and will connect properly without the locking tab, and that the most likely cause of a cable becoming unplugged is someone tripping over it and yanking it out. We believe that it is better to lose a connection that way than to have the cable yanked out of the connector which is still locked in place.
Additionally, having no latch on the connectors means that unplugging a mass of XLR's at the end of the gig is a wholesale transaction, with multiple hands and fingers able to remove several connectors at once from the patch field.
With latches, this process is a retail transaction, with each connector needing to be individually unlatched and disconnected.
Think of the fingers!
When building my own snakes, I'd file each latch down, and in the nearly 40 years I've been doing this kind of sound, with probably 250+ latchless channels, there has never been an issue such as you describe, although, to be fair, there have also been very few issues with cable trip-yanks. I bought ProCo subsnakes in part because they have no latches on the connectors, although Radial does.
Powered speaker connections are another story IMO, as are hard to reach connections and sequential cable junctions.
I do tolerate the Repressive Latching Faction, of course, and do not advocate action against them despite their misguided ways.
:twisted:
~:-D~:grin:
~;-)~:wink:
