Balanced Mono XLR out to 1/4” Stereo TRS in Confusion

G

Gordon Brinton

Freshman
Jul 18, 2015
28
0
0
Near Harrisburg, PA, USA
Recently, while setting up for a live band, the keyboard player held up his Rolls HA43 Headphone Amp and asked for a monitor send. (He uses it for hardwired IEM's.) Since the Rolls requires a stereo (L/R) TRS plug, I should have provided a linked stereo pair from the mixer. The problem began when I realized that I only had one aux/monitor channel left in the mixer, meaning he gets a mono send, not stereo. Furthermore, My AUX sends are balanced XLR.

So, all I had to do was to convert balanced mono to unbalanced stereo. Apparently, that's not as simple as it sounds. This cable didn't work...

XLR-stereojack.gif

He complained that he only had signal in one ear of his IEM's. I couldn't find anything in my assortment of adapters, connectors, and gender changers to get mono signal to both ears.

What was I doing wrong?
 
Re: Balanced Mono XLR out to 1/4” Stereo TRS in Confusion

You would need an adapter that connects pin 2 of the XLR to both the tip and ring of the TRS, and pin 3 to the sleeve. No connection to pin 1.
 
Re: Balanced Mono XLR out to 1/4” Stereo TRS in Confusion

Gordon Brinton said:
He complained that he only had signal in one ear of his IEM's.
Click to expand...

If he only had signal in one ear your output is impedance balanced, which has the noise avoidance benefits of a fully balanced balanced signal, but only has audio on pin 2. Your adapter with fully balanced audio would have had audio in both ears, but the 2 ears would be out of polarity with each other, which can sound strange.

Mac
 
Re: Balanced Mono XLR out to 1/4” Stereo TRS in Confusion

Instead of sounding like everything was in the center of his head, it would sound like it was outside his ears. Never thought of this before but it might be a good way to get rid of that "stuck in a box" feeling from mono IEMs.
 
Re: Balanced Mono XLR out to 1/4” Stereo TRS in Confusion

Steve Kirby said:
Instead of sounding like everything was in the center of his head, it would sound like it was outside his ears. Never thought of this before but it might be a good way to get rid of that "stuck in a box" feeling from mono IEMs.
Click to expand...

Important stuff panned straight up the middle will "disappear".
 
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