The XLR cable is the cable used going from the microphone to the Zoom H4M, this allows the audio to travel from device to device. The microphone is a Rode microphone, any Rode microphone will work as long as it has a male XLR cable port, a wind filter was then placed over the microphone, a wind filter is pretty much a large coat around the microphone which helps suppress the wind audio. The Zoom H4M is a device which records the audio, after turning the device on you must make sure both the microphone ports have 1 and 2 alight, if these numbers have not lit up, the audio will be recorded by the Zoom H4M.