1/4" phone or banana?

[Kevin Lightner]

>>Is it preferable, or is there any advantage to using 1/4" phone
>>jacks rather than banana jacks on synthesizer modules? 1/4" phone jacks
>>cost 2 to 4 times as much as banana jacks. Why did Moog and Emu use them
>>on their systems?

The best reason I can think of is that phone jacks have a ground. This
means your connection is shielded.
Patching from a moog on one side of the room to another across the way,
will have a better ground connection and while it should have a better
ground installed in such an application if this was a serious setup, doing
the same with a banana plug could have bad results after 20 feet.

Input impedances of 100k are pretty normal for synths, but I've seen ones
that are as high as 680k too.
An unshielded connection over 20 or so feet to that kind of inputm, might
let you enjoy the radio station's program down the street.

Also, a 1/4" phone connection is a more standard musical instrument
connection. Guitars, amps, Hi-Z mics, effects, keyboards, mixers all have
1/4" connections. If all synths had bananas as stock, we'd all be cursing
the broken banana to 1/4" adaptors that we would all have to use.

My .03 worth.

-Kevin

http://www.synthfool.com