Hi! The preparation of the XLR version of ONELAV is in full swing, and we've made a huge leap in the last four weeks.
A little bit of background. At first we thought about skipping the XLR version entirely. We had a lot of other aspects to focus on (and we still do). But we received several requests, especially from users of the Zoom F3 recorder, which doesn't have a line input — so here we are.
It seems basic, but this design needs hidden electronics: a PCBA that sits inside a male XLR connector. So the first and main challenge was creating one. It is possible to get good results with a combination of very cheap components, with no extra production effort needed on our side. But that's not our way. We want to stay professional and versatile, so we decided to design our own solution with great specs and all the possible boxes ticked. No compromises.
But we didn't have any experience designing PCBs ourselves, so…
We started looking for professionals to do it, and it was much harder than we thought. There are a lot of good and popular services for manufacturing PCBAs when you already have the Gerber and BOM files — but that's exactly the point, we didn't have a design. And the prices for creating one are really, really different, way above our current investment capabilities.
A lot of the pros we came to refused the project because it requires a lot of testing, and now I actually respect that. We messaged factories, local providers and freelancers. We picked some good options and started working with them. Two of them were shortlisted and given the same task — our design document.
And then came the results. It was exciting at first, but all of them failed the bench tests and showed some distinct changes to the sound, which was a design flaw to fix. After several iterations of corrections, both of the results progressed in one direction and regressed in something else. The last thing we want to sacrifice is sound quality, because that would be pretty dumb and pointless. What's the point of making a so-called PRO version if it downgrades the sound even a little bit? The issues were serious, like a high-pass filter reaching up to 40 Hz 🫠
Both of these options were pretty affordable for us (compared to other quotes we received), although one was twice as expensive as the other. And one of them did become acceptable to work with in the end, but we had a strange feeling about it being imperfect. If I had released a product like that, I would rather get something from the competitors, like the RODE VXLR adapter. Why even bother getting something from a small brand if it's actually worse than the popular commercial solutions and costs the same?
And that's why we went all in. We found one last provider, a very respectable company, and asked them a lot of technical questions to make sure we were on the same page on each and every element. Our previous experience helped us form a clear and detailed picture, and the design document. At this point I already knew some of the basics and had the PCB design software installed, so I could see everything myself.
And finally, we got it. Files that passed all the bench tests — no errors, no warnings. Perfect specs, perfect safety and versatility. A clean acceptance at JLCPCB, and even Claude pretty much didn't have anything left to offer. So we are finally ready to start production of the samples, which are already on the way.
We are super excited to try them, and we see big potential in this, as it opens up a lot of opportunities for our future products: phantom power to plug-in power adapters for both mono and stereo microphones, XLR versions of our future designs, and more. "And more" is not just a sentence ender this time. We actually have one particular unique idea for this board that seems very, very exciting, but it has a somewhat long way to go before we can consider it properly, so there's no reason to talk about it now.
For now, a lot of things need to be done to release the barebone XLR version with our custom board. First, testing of course. Then design adjustments, as we probably won't be able to use the same formula of ONELAV Jack 3.5 and Type-C — the XLR one requires two bulky connectors hanging at the end instead of one tiny and pretty one. We will have to think about custom packaging, because it won't fit in our current cases that come with our mics, or the boxes. And last but in fact pretty much the most important one, we will have to cover the certification for a technically entirely different product, so that we can sell it in the first place.
Big plans ahead, a lot of work to do, but we are motivated enough to do it. Big thanks to our early adopters who boosted our confidence. We hope our devices will be used in more and more great content!