kwillisjr wrote:I believe the output of the mixer is line level. The individual conductors are stripped and inserted into a connector with screws that tighten onto the conductor. The connections are plus, minus, and ground.
Yes, it probably is line level. The question is is it balanced or floating? Important distinction. Odds are that it's not unbalanced which is what we need.
kwillisjr wrote:The output that feeds the communicator has another mic wire sharing the output. That wire goes into a conduit that feeds I don't know what. I don't think these mic wires are shielded but the do have drain wires that connect to ground.
Another item sharing the output isn't a good sign. And if it had a drain wire, then it probably is shielded. Probably with foil which can be hard to see.
kwillisjr wrote:The mic wire that feeds the communicator enters the satellite cabinet and is spliced into a cheap RCA cable (they drop the drain wire at this point) that is inserted into one side of an RCA splitter / combiner (not a Y cable but performs the same function).
I'd like to know more about this.
kwillisjr wrote:The other side of the splitter / combiner has an RCA to RF adapter which connects to a coax cable which connects to an RF to Mini (1/8") adapter which plugs into the communicator.
The presence of the "RF" connector (I think you mean "F") is that it was originally designed to connect to a modulator that carries the chapel audio. I don't think you'd want to completely lose this feature.
kwillisjr wrote:I'm thinking that at very least all of this mess needs to be eliminated and a mini plug soldered directly to the mic cable.
Not so fast. My concern is that the signal coming out of the mixer is balanced. You can't just plug it into a unbalanced input without issues. A simple isolation transformer would be a good idea - if not a proper balanced to unbalanced adapter. Otherwise you're grounding out half your signal.
kwillisjr wrote:I also think that re-attaching the drain wire might eliminate the hum mentioned earlier.
One of the advantages of balanced is that you don't have to connect the ground wire. That may be desirable in certain situations. Otherwise you may find yourself tying the 3rd pin power ground together through your audio cabling. I think you need to do a proper bal to unbal and see how that works.