Making a Balanced cable to go from a 4.4mm DAC to two 3pin XLRs 

Thanks - I will ;)

Yes, I would have thought that after doing it for years I would have stopped forgetting things like that ;)

Yes, ergonomics and microphonics are often overlooked on cables

we use quite thick wire that wicks the heat away so normally use something around 0.8mm - the one in this video was too pointy and did not have enough thermal mass, I was just working at a desk we normally use for electronics work and was too lazy to change tips

I should do some more cable videos soon

You would have to look up the correct wiring as there is a few ways of setting up mini XLRs but they are not too hard to work with, a but fiddly as the pins are close together but we solder hundreds of them without issues

Here is a link jfunk.org/wpc/product/6-wire-fully-balanced-4-4mm-to-2-x-3pin-xlr-to-connecto-a-balanced-palyer-to-a-balanced-amplifier/

You're welcome

I always learn more from mistakes than anything else ;)

Thanks

No, probably not as the headphones are not balanced. If you had a balanced headphone amp and balanced headphones then you would get better channel separation. The only time you would get an advantage with balanced cables between the ZenDAC and the g103p would probably be if they were quite far apart and you had to use a long cable - in that case the balanced signal would cut down on noise but for a short cable, RCA is probably fine

It is all about trade-offs. Shielding is necessary for low power signals like those coming from a turntable where the signal and any nose from RFI/EMI will be amplified a lot but it adds to the capacitance of the cable. Where as on the other end of the scale, speaker cables are hardly ever shielded because they carry a lot more power so the noise from RFI / EMI will be so small in comparison that it is not really worth worrying about and the added capacitance could cause a noticeable roll off of the very high frequencies. Braiding helps cut down the cables tendency to pick up interference and we did away with shielding on most of our cables in an effort to get the capacitance as low as we could.

Yes, Just leave it disconnected, you only really need the + and - wires - you could use shielded cable and connect the ground but it would not make a lot of difference and would increase the weight and capacitance of the cable

Yes. the Hifinam cables are pretty easy to make. I may do a video on it soon

You just need + and -, no need for a separate ground on headphones, there are only two connections to the driver. Audio is an AC signal so the + side actually constantly swaps between positive and negative and the - side will either be ground or the inverse of the + side.

If you email custom cans, we have made quite a few like that for people

@@CustomCans awesome. Thanks for the reply.

Don't worry, I have my BSc so me and science go way back ;) Yes, the difference in impedance is very small and would be unlikely to give any audible difference - it is just what we use and seems to work well at the high temps we have to use with the litz wire which needs to be tinned at 450c + or 840 Fredum units to get it to solder nicely

No, you would need to convert the headphones to balanced with a 4 pin mini xlr socket

@@CustomCans Thank you for the quick answer! :D

For a one off cable, you can just remove the inner strands from the paracord and then feed the wire through the, now empty, outer cover

@@CustomCans Thanks mate.

I think a lot of players / amps have it connected but probably not all.

Yes, that is correct

@@CustomCans Thx. I looked online for a diagram but found only those for 2x 3-pin XLR to 4,4 mm and nothing about that ground pin. I didn't want to burn my Zen Dac by accident.

This one www.rapidonline.com/r-tech-856874-lead-free-sn-cu-ag-ni-ge-solder-22swg-0-7mm-0-5kg-85-6874

If you hunt around you can find coppies on places like lunashops for a few $

On that cable, i used 84 X 0.071mm litz wire