DangerBoy
Active Member
I'm building a 3.5 mm headphone jack to right and left male RCA jack cable and I could use some advice from people with experience and expertise in building good quality headphone cables.
The cable I'll be using is Canare L-4E6S Star Quad shielded 4 wire microphone cable. It has 2 blue and 2 white conductors all twisted and braided shielding around that. With all those conductors, I have a few options and I'm wondering which would likely yield the best result.
One way I could go is use the two blues for R+, the two whites as L+ and the shielding as ground. Another way would be to use one blue/white pair as ground, not use the shield for anything and use the remaining blue as R+ and the remaining white as L+.
I'm just planning to use short lengths of the same cable from the split to the RCA jacks so on each side I could use all four conductors as the + and the shielding as the - or I could go with two of the conductors as the + and the other two as the - and also use the shielding as - or not. From the split to the RCA jacks is only going to be about 6" whereas from the headphone jack to the split will be 5.5 - 6 feet so whatever I do from the split to the RCAs isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to the overall resistance of the cable anyways but I'm interested to hear what people suggest and why.
What do you suggest would be the best way to wire this cable given the wire I have to work with and why?
The cable I'll be using is Canare L-4E6S Star Quad shielded 4 wire microphone cable. It has 2 blue and 2 white conductors all twisted and braided shielding around that. With all those conductors, I have a few options and I'm wondering which would likely yield the best result.
One way I could go is use the two blues for R+, the two whites as L+ and the shielding as ground. Another way would be to use one blue/white pair as ground, not use the shield for anything and use the remaining blue as R+ and the remaining white as L+.
I'm just planning to use short lengths of the same cable from the split to the RCA jacks so on each side I could use all four conductors as the + and the shielding as the - or I could go with two of the conductors as the + and the other two as the - and also use the shielding as - or not. From the split to the RCA jacks is only going to be about 6" whereas from the headphone jack to the split will be 5.5 - 6 feet so whatever I do from the split to the RCAs isn't going to make a whole lot of difference to the overall resistance of the cable anyways but I'm interested to hear what people suggest and why.
What do you suggest would be the best way to wire this cable given the wire I have to work with and why?
