balanced / unbalanced jacks

[timmiddleton]

hi

 

is there a simple way to make a short balanced to unbalanced jack lead, and vise-versa? I have a behringer mixer with unbal outputs but it's often much more useful to have balanced ones. and often I find it's the other way around when I use other equipment.

 

any ideas??

 

tim

[PoppaDom]

hi

 

is there a simple way to make a short balanced to unbalanced jack lead, and vise-versa? I have a behringer mixer with unbal outputs but it's often much more useful to have balanced ones. and often I find it's the other way around when I use other equipment.

 

any ideas??

 

tim

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

To make an unbalanced signal from the mixer make a connection using just pins 1 and 2 (tip and screen) which will give you an unbalanced lead drawing from the + side of the desks balanced output.

 

To convert unbalanced to balanced is a little more complicated and not quite so simple. The easiest solution I have used is using an isolating transformer circuit (1:1 winding) to create a balanced output from the unbalanced for distribution over longer distances.

 

Which behringer desk do you own?

 

The benefits of balanced signals are normally felt over longer runs... so if you are connecting your desk to amp via <5m cable I would not worry too much about the balancing issue. (Unless the gain benefits are also advantagous to you)

 

Hope this once again makes sense...

 

Poppadom

[timmiddleton]

at the moment I've only got a little UB1202 but im planning on buying an MX3242X in the summer

[londonjim]

Yes, what you need to do is:

 

* Wire tip to tip

* Wire ring on balanced to sleeve on unbalanced

* Sleeve to Sleeve

 

This is the way I have been taught to do it, and this is the way I have been taught to wire from mono jack to XLR

 

Unless anyone else has and suggestions, I suggest you do it this way.