Does it matter? Can you tell "right" from "left" by ear? Lessee,
strings on the left, brass on the right, percussion in back...
Of course if it's wrong, just fire up the ol' soldering iron,
and swap them. Takes about four minutes.
Cheers!
Rich
I'VE REPOSTED MY MESSAGE WITH FEWER TYPOS!
IGNORE THE PREVIOUS VERSION.
Hi Rich. I would love to just resolder the adaptors but my pics show
the connectors are moulded on to the wires.
Worse still, it's not for a fixed setup because I'm testing mono
microphones and need to eliminate disparities in the recorder and
player. Below are some typical set ups.
--------------------
I use a stereo portable recorder and make a recording with one test
mic on one channel and another mic on the other channel.
To compare the two recordings I might do this: Take the L or R (and
I need to identify which is which because of course that tells me
which mic I am listening to) and feed its signal into both L and R
conductors on the line-in socket on the PC.
To eliminate disparities created by the recorder (maybe it records
differently on its L and its R channel) I need to be able to keep
track of the channels because I may make another recording with mics
swapped around.
An alternative requirement I have is when I to feed the portable
recorder's output into the PC on both channels (stereo) and then I
would use an audio editor to replay either L or R channel on its own.
To avoid colouration from the different L and R replay channels of
the PC, I connect the single played channel so that it comes through
both PC speakers. I do that by taking the output from one channel of
the PC's 3.5mm "audio-out" connector and connect it to both L PLUS R
of the input of my powered PC speakers. I would use the adaptors
with the colour problem for that last step.
In fact it's just a little bit more involved than that because
sometimes I use a one-piece "RCA phono" coupler to spilt out the two
channels. I also need some other adaptors as these links show.
<
http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg01989/adaptor-3-5mm-s-to-phono-
p/dp/AV15537>
<
http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg02781/adaptor-2x-phono-to-3-5-
jack-st/dp/AV17296>
However the presence of all this extra stuff just adds unnecessary
complication because I wire and rewire these combos quite a lot. The
extra connectors also add more physical connections which may NOT get
be made 100% electrically correctly and can introduce noise to the
audio. Those 3.5mm connectors are all too prone to this.
There are also other combinations of equipment which need me to be
sure about L and R. I might work through these combinations every 5
or 10 minutes depending on the results I am getting.
Phew! You can see that mixing up L and R on account strangely
coloured connectors is going to add points at which errors in
labelling can creep in.
I posted originally because I was wondering if RED = TIP = R-CHANNEL
was part of some convention I had not heard of which may have made
sense if only I knew what the convention is.
--------------------
Maybe these connectors I have got are some incorrectly wired rejects
which are being sold by CPC Farnell. See links:
<
http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg00112/3-5mm-st-plug-to-2x-mono-
sockets/dp/AV13710>
<
http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-signal/psg00185/lead-3-5mm-s-socket-
2xphono-2m/dp/AV13783>
Peter