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Make a Headphone Cable with Dual Unbalanced Mic cable?

Suppa92

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guys, is it a good choice to diy a single-ended headphone cable with any unbalanced cable (eg: mogami w2528 dual )?

w2528-1_1.jpg

I recently found a mogami w2528 cable lying around & thought of diy a headphone cable, I just want to know is it good thing to use shield as the ground for the each headphone cup left/right end and connect both shields to the ground/sleeve of 1/4" trs connector at the other end? could this sort of a configuration (or cable) introduce audible hum/ noise to the sound?
or should I use a balanced cable like mogami W2534 ? is there any benefit of doing that with a balanced cable?
w2534.jpg
 
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maverickronin

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I've never actually heard a headphone cable pick up any audible interference, but I'm sure it's possible in exactly the wrong circumstances.

I have a headphone extension cable I made from Canare star quad and it works just fine.

For this, I would not worry about the electrical consequences of the cable choice and use whichever one you feel provides the best ergonomics.
 

Leiker535

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I've never actually heard a headphone cable pick up any audible interference, but I'm sure it's possible in exactly the wrong circumstances.

I have a headphone extension cable I made from Canare star quad and it works just fine.

For this, I would not worry about the electrical consequences of the cable choice and use whichever one you feel provides the best ergonomics.

I've had a friend who had some with his HP that had a built-in mic over the cable. The "crosstalk" was very audible for us on Discord while he used it: a lot of things he heard was being passed through to the mic's signal. Could be the mic picking up some sound leakage from the actual drivers though. Nvidia broadcast fixed it for him.
 

maverickronin

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I've had a friend who had some with his HP that had a built-in mic over the cable. The "crosstalk" was very audible for us on Discord while he used it: a lot of things he heard was being passed through to the mic's signal. Could be the mic picking up some sound leakage from the actual drivers though. Nvidia broadcast fixed it for him.
Definitely more of a concern with mics as they have a lower level signal which is amplified later.
 
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Suppa92

Suppa92

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I've never actually heard a headphone cable pick up any audible interference, but I'm sure it's possible in exactly the wrong circumstances.

I have a headphone extension cable I made from Canare star quad and it works just fine.

For this, I would not worry about the electrical consequences of the cable choice and use whichever one you feel provides the best ergonomics.
thanks for the comment.
I'm just wondering whether using the shield as ground would pickup any electrical signals or resistance or capacitance etc. would be different to the hot & ground path. (hot & ground paths are not similar in properties)
because most of the headphones i've seen have two conductors inside (twisted pair etc) for hot, ground and shield around them.
I've no knowledge in electrical stuff, most probably I'm overthinking this. :rolleyes:
 
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Helicopter

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With that cable, I would pull the insulation and shield off and trash them, then wrap the 4 internal wires in paracord sleeving, and dress the ends and such with a nice splitter, some hot melt glue, and heat shrink with adhesive in it.

Or just get some twisted 4 cores headphone wire from Ali like this.
 
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Suppa92

Suppa92

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With that cable, I would pull the insulation and shield off and trash them, then wrap the 4 internal wires in paracord sleeving, and dress the ends and such with a nice splitter, some hot melt glue, and heat shrink with adhesive in it.
oh I think you're talking about the mogami W2534 in the bottom picture. I've the one on top mogami w2528, which has one conductor inside and a copper shield.
 

Helicopter

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oh I think you're talking about the mogami W2534 in the bottom picture. I've the one on top mogami w2528, which has one conductor inside and a copper shield.
Correct. That cable you have will work fine. Just need to dress it up so it doesn't split more than you want it to. Solder the core to the hot (+) and the shield to the cold (-) for conventional wiring. It probably doesn't matter though. Main thing is finding a cable that looks and feels nice. You could probably dress this up in paracord sleeving too if you wanted, but I wouldn't remove the insulator since you're going to use the shield as a conductor.
 
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Suppa92

Suppa92

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Correct. That cable you have will work fine. Just need to dress it up so it doesn't split more than you want it to. Solder the core to the hot (+) and the shield to the cold (-) for conventional wiring. It probably doesn't matter though. Main thing is finding a cable that looks and feels nice. You could probably dress this up in paracord sleeving too if you wanted, but I wouldn't remove the insulator since you're going to use the shield as a conductor.
great, I'll do so. making them pretty seems to be the tough part . :):D
 

maverickronin

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I'm just wondering whether using the shield as ground would pickup any electrical signals or resistance or capacitance etc. would be different to the hot & ground path. (hot & ground paths are not similar in properties)
because most of the headphones i've seen have two conductors inside (twisted pair etc) for hot, ground and shield around them.
I've no knowledge in electrical stuff, most probably I'm overthinking this. :rolleyes:

With the W2528 "best practice" would be to use the core as the hot and shield as the ground. IRL for a normal length cable, going to an average pair of full size headphones, in an average environment it's not likely to produce audible difference.

If you were making a long extension cord for a pair of very sensitive IEMs that ran though a rat's nest of other cables then termination, grounding, and shielding could lead to audible differences in noise pickup.

Beyond that there are the basic electrical characteristics of impedance, capacitance, and inductance which could in theory make some kind of filter to alter the frequency response but with typical headphones and headphone amplifiers this would take a pathologically badly designed cable.

What headphones are you making this cable for?
 
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Suppa92

Suppa92

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With the W2528 "best practice" would be to use the core as the hot and shield as the ground. IRL for a normal length cable, going to an average pair of full size headphones, in an average environment it's not likely to produce audible difference.

If you were making a long extension cord for a pair of very sensitive IEMs that ran though a rat's nest of other cables then termination, grounding, and shielding could lead to audible differences in noise pickup.

Beyond that there are the basic electrical characteristics of impedance, capacitance, and inductance which could in theory make some kind of filter to alter the frequency response but with typical headphones and headphone amplifiers this would take a pathologically badly designed cable.

What headphones are you making this cable for?
Verum 1 mk2. which is rated at 8ohms.
 
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Suppa92

Suppa92

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freemansteve

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Bags of signal to most normal headphones. Almost anything screened will work fine. Really cheap stuff might be microphonic though.
 
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