Looking for advice on a headphone cable carrying microphone signal.

[Jimtex]

I am looking to find some bare cable (no attached connectors) to repair my Audio Technica ATH-G1.
What I am having trouble with is finding a 4-5 conductor cable that is close to 4mm and has a silicone outer insulation. From my understanding even though the current cable has 6 conductors (5 that are actually used and in the end they all terminate in a TRRS jack that only has 4 pins. see attached photos) I should only need 4 conductors.
I am also unsure if having the microphone wire twisted with the ground wire would course interference?

So, any advice on search terms to use or links to your preferred cables would be appreciated, thanks.

Photo of current cable and connect to circuit board inside headphones.

Extra unnecessary information for context and some less relevant questions that are not really important.
I actually need to repair 3 headphones as my cats has gotten a taste for headphone cables. I have cut out the chewed bit of my cable and shortened it temporarily but my housemates’ pair of headphones has been eaten all the way to the headset. I am planning on installing a 3.5 female TRRS into the headphone and just making my own TRRS male to male as I expect it will be the cheaper option if the cats decide to monch them again.

Also, any suggestion on a small TRRS female connector would be appreciated, I am thinking of getting a surface mount one and using silicone to mount it in place, but if anyone knows of some good small (4-6 mm shell OD) connectors please share.

Thirdly the ATH-G1 has an inline microphone mute and volume adjust dongle. All that is in it is a switch for mute an a variable resistor for volume..?

Lastly any suggestions for some braided cables covers would also be nice, im thinking of incorporating them into some of the cables I make. I am also looking into making some USB-C charging cables in future and want to have some braids for them as well.

 

[AnalogSteph]

While the cable terminates in a TRRS, that doesn't mean that you only need a 4-conductor cable. In fact, you could use up to 6: Headphone L + L-gnd, R + R-gnd and mic + mic-gnd. I can only guess that they may have found it to be super hard to attach more than two conductors to one terminal, so went with the compromise of sharing mic-gnd with L-gnd.

You normally want to keep shared return resistance between the headphone and microphone to a minimum, as it leads to audio leaking from the former into the latter.

Likewise, you want to keep shared return resistance between L and R channels down (rule of thumb: max 1% of nominal driver impedance) because it leads to L+R being attenuated while L-R is not, so you get some (frequency-dependent) slight stereo widening.

Moreover, the demands for microphone and headphone wiring are actually somewhat different:

Microphone wire for one of these consumer electret jobs should be coaxial in nature with decent shielding (all the way from the capsule to the plug), lowish capacitance and low electrical microphony (generated noise when moved). Some sort of thin, flexible "audio cable". We are talking low-level signals at moderately high impedances with superimposed DC here.

Headphone wire needs to have "somewhat low" resistance (<10% of nominal driver impedance for both runs) but is pretty much "don't care" in other electrical parameters. Low weight yet still decent rigidity, mechanical flexibility and lack of microphonics are fairly important, however.

Squeezing both into one multiconductor cable is generally going to be a compromise unless its construction is super special.

For the headphone part, I might be looking into using a HD599 spare cable. Then you'd still need a second jack for the mic though... A 6-pin Mini-XLR might be a suitable all-in-one connector, but might prove a tad big... (AKG have used Mini-XLR in headphones, so it's definitely doable.)

Not sure how one might keep cats from gnawing on cables, maybe coat them in some sort of essential oils or something?

Thirdly the ATH-G1 has an inline microphone mute and volume adjust dongle. All that is in it is a switch for mute an a variable resistor for volume..?

So...? What else did you expect? Using a pot is not exactly hi-fi but it was considered good enough for a gaming headset, I guess.