TRS and XLR Questions

[strumpystrudel]

I have a Variax 705 and a JTV-89F. Each has their own DI box for supplying power. I have a number of Mogami TRS cables including some made by ProAudioLA and all work fine in supplying power to the onboard electronics from the DI / Power Box.

I ordered a couple more TRS cables that are shorter for cable management reasons from ProAudioLA: one works and one doesn’t... it doesn’t send power to either instrument. Trying to get them to replace it has been a pain because they are not familiar with this use case apparently, say they are trying to say it is working fine I’m just not using it as intended and should have ordered a TS.

First question: Really any high quality TRS cable should work for this use case, correct? Again, I’ve had zero issues with any TRS I’ve used until I received this one particular cable.

Lastly, I’ve usually just done TRS from Variax to DI in and unbalanced TS from DI out to interface (RME Babyface Pro FS).

Second question: Would it be preferable to do TRS from Variax to DI in and balanced XLR from DI out to interface?

I know balanced is supposed to provide a cleaner signal. Initially when I started experimenting with it (with some Mogami XLR cables) the signal was way noisier. Tried various combinations of Mogami XLR cables, Line 6 DI boxes, and inputs on the Babyface Pro. Did finally manage to clean it up by messing with the gain and levels on the inputs via RME Totalmix. Now there is much less noise, pretty close to the unbalanced TS I was doing, and it definitely sounds different tonally which I haven’t spent enough time yet determining if I like yet compared to the unbalanced TS.

[psarkissian]

1) Yes, any good TRS cable works. Sometimes the plug dimension don't always fit the jack as good as they should and can result in contact overlap between contacts when in the jack. Variax is an active circuit guitar, so TRS is the thing to use.

 

2) TRS is fine. balanced XLR out is useful when a mixer with an XLR mic input with buffer is used.

"... pretty close to the unbalanced TS I was doing, and it definitely sounds different tonally ... " ---

unbalanced TS will have a slight impedance difference than balanced TRS, and so a corresponding difference in tone with impedance,

being that impedance is a function of and cause and affect relation with frequency.