1/4" TRS question

M

microchip

New member
Ok, so I am reading about connections and about balanced and unbalanced TRS plugs. It said that balanced TRS 1/4" jacks have the tip, ring, and shaft. Unbalanced plugs just have the tip and shaft right?

So if I have the 1/4" plug and it has the one ring down near the tip, I have a balanced one right? I ask because the artice I was reading made it sound like only professionals use the balanced plugs, and that everyone else used the unbalnced. But even the basic 1/4" plugs bought in regular electronics stores are balanced then (as long as they have the ring)right??
 
Grab a heaphone cord and a guitar cord. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Ready? Good...

Notice how the end of the headphone cord is a little longer and has an extra ring at the end? That is what a balanced jack looks like.

The guitar cord is a little shorter and doesn't have the ring. Its unbalanced.

There you go!

Professional gear is almost always balanced unless they're marketing it into the "pro-sumer" market in which case it might not be balanced.

Keep in mind though that TRS can also be used for send/returns on mixers and such. For example, I have a Mackie 1604 VLZ with some auxillary send/returns that use TRS. In this case, the cord will actually be a Y cord. The tip sends a signal to one of the jacks which I would put "into" a reverb or something, and the return would go "out" of the reverb and travel to the ring of the TRS. The sleeve is always ground.

Confused? Don't be, its really not that difficult. I just make it look that way!

Then of course there are TT jacks used in professional patch bays. That is a different story!
 
Balancing is an electronic method to reject noise that sticks itself to a signal being carried over your wire. Balancing requires the proper electronics on both ends of the line.

It really has nothing to do with connectors directly. You can run a balanced signal on any connector that has three conductors, technically, and 1/4" TRS and 3 pin XLR connectors are the most often used (or the only?).

Don't sweat it. You can run unbalanced gear using TRS connectors. You can run balanced gear using TS connectors, although there will be no balancing. If you're not in an environment with a lot of nasty interference and your cable runs aren't real long, it's not something that you really need to worry too much about.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Ah, CMiller beat me to it! Just to clarify once more, there is no such thing as a balanced connector, although it is common to use the term since most people will know what you're talking about. You'll often see gear literature that will say "Balanced TRS Connectors", and what they mean is that the output (say) of the piece of equipment is balanced, and it uses a 1/4" TRS jack.

Here's a good little article that explains the difference between balanced & unbalanced lines:

http://www.nullmodem.com/Audio.htm

Slackmaster 2000
 
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