[Lil' Knight]

Hi all,

I'm going the buy a balanced headamp which has the 4-pin XLR female jack in the front panel. I gonna recable my Senn cable to use with it. Of course I can terminate it with a 4-pin XLR male plug. However it's kinda not popular.

I wonder if something like a 4-pin XLR male plug to 1/4" female jack and then 1/4" male plug will play the same task? I just wanna keep my Senn cable as normal as possible but still a little bit confused about this balanced configuration.

Thanks.

 

[JamesL]

Are you saying you want to terminate it with a 4 pin xlr, and make a separate 4-pin to trs jack adapter?
Or do you want to terminate it with a trs plug, and make a trs to xlr adapter for your amp?

In the first case, I don't know why you'd want to make a adapter cable with a 1/4" jack.. maybe you mean plug?
But yes, that would work. You can use the 4-pin xlr with the amp, and use the adapter with any other amplifier.

The second won't work. The TRS connector only has a single ground connection. You need 4 conductors for a balanced configuration.

 

[Lil' Knight]

What I want is to buid a 4-pin XLR -> 1/4" TRS jack to use with my Senn cable.
Something like this:

->

Is it possible if I use a starquad wire?

 

[JamesL]

That won't work.
The amp outputs a positive and inverted signal per channel which requires 4 conductors.
A 1/4" TRS jack/plug shares a common ground.
Even if you used 4 conductors for your senn cable, the TRS plug/jack only has 3 conductors.

The best thing to do is terminate your senn cable with the 4pin xlr, and make a XLR-phono adapter when you need it.
Otherwise, you can terminate your senn cable with dual-xlr, or dual mono, and use a adapter with that.. but thats really counter-intuitive.

 

[Lil' Knight]

Got it

Thanks for the fast response. Look like I have to reterminate it with a 4-pin XLR and then build a XLR-TRS adapter to use with normal amp.

 

[digger945]

Just terminate your Senn cable with the XLR plug you want for the balanced amp, and make an adapter for unbalanced use. The adapter will just tie both signal grounds together.

EDIT: I see you already got it!

 

[4L3X]

Sorry for digging out this old thread, but i don't understand completely why this adapter wouldn't work.
 
I want to use my Ultrasone PRO900 on the 4pin XLR-out of my amp, but it has a TRS jack.
 
I understand that is is necsssary to conntect the left and right inverted signal on the TRS jack.
Would this be bad for the sound or the amp?
 
I really don't want to balance the headphones, because this would be a real pain.
 
 
Thanks.

 

[nikongod]

 
Quote:

Sorry for digging out this old thread, but i don't understand completely why this adapter wouldn't work.
 
I want to use my Ultrasone PRO900 on the 4pin XLR-out of my amp, but it has a TRS jack.
 
I understand that is is necsssary to conntect the left and right inverted signal on the TRS jack.
Would this be bad for the sound or the amp?
 

By doing this you are shorting the out of phase connections together. There is the risk that they will try to drive each other, source/sink infinite current and blow up. Some amps are immune to this (Transformer coupled amps, and amps with output resistors outside of the feedback loops {but these are dum}) many are not.
 
Quote:

  I really don't want to balance the headphones, because this would be a real pain.
 

 
Doing it right is not always easy. 
 
An alternate "right way" to do this is to get an amp that is designed to accommodate a 1/4" plug 

 

[4L3X]

Ok, I understand.
 
Thanks for the fast response!