(Admittedly coming from a guy with an audio background. That means that if I had to make a light come on with something like a Grand MA or an Avolite Pearl, I'd still be in the dark)
So is there a move afoot in DMX world to move from 5-pin XLR connectors to 3-pin? For the past couple of years, the lighting department will send a slip to my desk..."Need 4 pairs of 5-pin to 3-pin adapters for this weekend"...or "Need 8 more pairs of adapters" to the point that we are now up 36 (that I'm aware of) adapters of this nature. And for under-20ft connections between fixtures, they just grab mic cables, which is bad because (A) even I know that using mic cables for DMX fixtures might or might not work reliably (I know, I know, I know, a lot of guys do and proclaim "No problems, I get it already) and (B) when I have 4 or more audio shows going out, one of them a symphony show, I run out of mic cables pretty quickly. And since we rent a lot of the various fixtures that we use, we see several different brands and models of fixtures.
I guess this is rhetorical question since we've ordered a couple of thousand ft of DMX cable to build out a bunch of under-50ft 3-pin XLR, the idea being to run 5-pin from the control (FOH or other) to the dimmers and splitters and to use just a few adapters to get into the 3-pin runs.
But why are some manufacturers using the 3-pin XLRs when I've read little notes to the effect of (paraphrasing) "The DMX communications standard is viable only when DMX-spec cables are used with 5-pin XLR connectors. Use of any other cable or connectors can significantly reduce integrity and reliablility of DMX control."? While I'm not making notes or documenting what I'm seeing, I think I've even seen a mixture of 3-pin and 5-pin conenctors between models of the same brand.
Any rhyme or reason to all of this?
Geri O