What type of connector is used when hooking up DMX lights?

Answer 1

Simply put, all lighting devices carrying a DMX protocol use an XLR type connector. However, the industry standard in stage lighting involves using a 5-pin XLR connector. Most conventional consoles and dimmers use 5-pin connectors, but nowaday, 3-pin XLR connectors are also being used - in perticular in 'intelligent' or moving head lights. These do not function any differently to a 5-pin connector, just all the signals are merged into fewer pins. The reason why the industry standard is still 5-pin, is because many people disagree that a 3-pin connector should be used, because many devices have been damaged when stage crew connect a 3-pin XLR cable (carrying DMX) to an audio mixer, thinking it's comming from a microphone. So the industry standard is still a 5-pin XLR connector, to avoid confusion between what each cable is carrying.

I'm guessing that you're connecting up some lights, so if you equipment uses 5-pin connectors, go right ahead. But if your equipment uses 3-pin connectors, just make sure that you know exactly where it's being connected, and that you're lighting console has a 3-pin DMX out connector.

But don't worry if the connectors on each end of DMX line are different. You can buy cheap adapters that convert the signal of 5 pins to 3 pins, or vica versa.

Hope this helped!

a.jaudzems