For the past year and a bit, I’ve had my headset connected to my Behringer Eurorack RX1602 audio mixer and to the computer motherboard’s mic in jack. However CPU and GPU coil whine were both emitted and picked up through the motherboard’s onboard audio (motherboards have terrible EMF shielding). Upon installing a modded monitor riser, I had changed the headset mic to connect to one of the inputs of my Steinberg UR44 audio interface.

However, the audio signal was very weak, and the SNR wasn’t great.
(Disclaimer: The preamps in the UR44 are exceptionally good, but the audio signal from the headset was that weak that I had to turn up the gain all the way and add a boost from the compressor, adding heaps of white noise).

The reason for this is that my headset microphone was an electret mic, which needed plug-in power (3-5V) that would be supplied from the host device. Whilst my motherboard would supply this plug-in power, the pro-sumer UR44 interface was not built with 3.5mm microphone support in mind.

However, there is (many) a solution! There exists devices like the Rode VXLR+ which provides plug-in power from an XLR jack supplying phantom power!

I went and purchased the Rode VXLR+ as well as a Low Profile XLR adapter (Cable Techniques CT-LPXR-24K), so I could minimise the size footprint of the adapter and move it away from the front IO port location

(Don’t forget to turn on your Phantom Power after you install it!)

With the Rode VXLR+, I was getting a much strong audio level and signal-to-noise ratio!
No more white noise, yay!