[sdiy] Combined output / headphone jack?

[Neil Harper]

On 2024-10-14 17:50, brianw wrote:
> The Ensoniq SQ-80 is far too old to support balanced TRS. On that model, the headphones would be stereo unbalanced, and the line output would be unbalanced TS connections.
>
> In fact, it's still quite rare today (or so it seems) to find a synth that supports balanced outputs, but I agree that it's worth pursuing. I seem to recall that the Roland Jupiter-6 has balanced outputs, but they're on XLR male jacks, not TRS.
>
> How many modern synths have balanced outputs? I think the Access Virus might. Which of those have TRS jacks for dual-purpose line outputs and headphone outputs?
>
> For balanced, Tip and Ring are opposite polarity. For headphones, that would sound awful. I suspect that there would need to be some sort of manual switch to flip to stereo (unbalanced) for headphones or mono balanced otherwise. The challenge is that there is no way to automatically detect the difference between a headphone plug and a TRS balanced plug.
>
> Brian
>
> p.s. Re-reading your message, I realize that you probably don't expect the SQ-80 to properly support a balanced TRS plug that gets inserted, but you're wondering how that would be "handled." I would expect that the signal would be very faint on the other end of the cable, if it's actually connected to a balanced input. The faint signal would occur for sounds panned to center, and they would get louder as the sounds are panned away from center, but would still be as much as 6 dB quieter than a proper balanced signal.


hey Brian, I'm just interested in a mono source.. single 1/4" output
that is both compatible with unbalanced line-out and stereo headphones.

the case where a user plugs a TRS in and expects to get a balanced
line-level signal is something I'm not at all worried about. expecting
that to work on a synth is quite an assumption unless
documented/labelled as such.




--
/// Neil Harper
/// Every Wave is New Until it Breaks