XLR balanced to 3.5mm audio?

Panos Lymperopoulos

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Apr 29, 2021
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Hi all, đź‘‹

I recently purchased two KRK rokit 5 g4 monitors…

I want to connect these monitors to my laptop using XLR to 3.5mm audio jack…

I found this cable,


but it nowhere mentions that is balanced..

how do I tell if it is?
Is it possible to be?

thanks I’m advance
No it's not balanced, no it's not possible to be balanced and no it doesn't matter that it's not balanced unless you were to try to extend the cable between your laptop and speakers many dozens of meters.
 
That aliexpress cable is not balanced because each XLR is only fed by a cable with one centre conductor and the shield.

How are you planning on getting the audio out of the laptop?
If it's from the headphone socket, that will not be balanced anyway, so the unbalanced cable from aliexpress will work, as long as you're not in an environment with enough electrical noise to need balanced.

If you do need balanced, than a USB audio adapter will likely be needed, cheap ones are 40-odd quid/bucks/euros, then just use regular XLR-XLR cables from the interface out to the speakers.
 
Both answers are great… so @Riley says it doesn’t worth the effort because I won’t feel the difference because of small space, and David answered pretty much the question!

perfect clear both.

I think I am gonna go with it anyway if I find a cheap/good audio interface

thanks again guys!
Cheers
 
You can build a "forward reference cable". You'll need a large barrel 3.5 TRS male connector, very small diameter twisted pair audio cable. See Bill Whitlock's article on the ProSoundWeb.
 
The best large barrel 3.5mm TRS connector I know of is the Canare F-12.
A couple of small diameter twisted pair audio cables are:
Gepco X-band XB401 it has an overall diameter of 0.145"
Mogami W2697 has an overall diameter of 0.097"
 
A USB D to A interface could possibably provide a much higher quality audio signal. The headphone jack's internal amplifier isn't the highest fidelity device. I have several House Of Worship customers that complained about noisy audio for the "tracks" coming from their expensive MAC's. They were using the headphone out into a good quality DI box. Switching to an inexpensive D to A interface solved the problem.