Originally Posted By: Matt Finley
I liked it when things were simpler in that the line out jacks were most likely for RCA red and white plugs, whereas the headphone jack was 1/4” or later 1/8” for phone plugs.

That's interesting. I've generally disliked RCAs as they've seemed to me a rather unreliable connection. OK when new, but even the good gold ones seem to not last so long. They are nice and compact, though.

I've tended to like XLRs, but a friend reasonably argues for 1/4" jacks with "when you trip on a cable, at least they don't bring down the whole PA rack".

Always bring lots of gaffer tape. laugh
And if the cable runs sideways, 1/4" racks still risk pulling the rack over.

Ideally line in and out would also be balanced signals to help avoid hum pickup and the like, so a TRS line jack would have +, - and ground/screen, where a headphone jack would have left, right and ground/screen. XLRs of course have wire connections for +, - and 0V and also a screen, though the 0V and screen might be connected together (IMHO they should not be, but...).


On some equipment like PCs and laptops where the mini-jack is labelled with both headphone and line, the obvious way to make things 'right'-ish is to have 0dB on the PC's settings set output to line-level-0dB on the headphone outputs. In truth there are slight differences anyway in exactly what is considered line-level-0dB.

Jazz relative beginner, starting at a much older age than was helpful.
AVL:MXE Linux; Windows 11
BIAB2025 Audiophile, a bunch of other software.
Kawai MP6, Ui24R, Focusrite Saffire Pro40 and Scarletts
.