cut the shield off. It's not used for a headphone cable. By "cut off", I mean just trim the shield off the part of the cable you expose to attach the connectors.For a regular unbalanced headphone cable, TRS to mini-XLR, how should the wires and shield of a star quad cable be connected?
You can use three or four of the wires. One to each positive, and one to two to the common.