I recently decided to convert some single ended Van Den Hul – The Thunderline cable which I was originally using as an interconnect a few years back in to a nice AES/EBU digital cable. There is a standard for the wiring of balanced cables but there is also a lot of other ways to wire a cable.

In the diagram above the top image shows the standard way to wire a balanced cable. This is Pin 2 Hot, Pin 3 Cold, and Pin 1 to Ground (GND). This works great for the standard digital applications and also for microphones where a hum and noise could be introduced in to the cable.

The wiring of audiophile cables is slightly different, traditionally you would leave the Ground (GND) connected only at the source end of the cable. This method provided the same screening as the standard method but reduces the chances of creating ground loops as the ground is disconnected. This probably doesn’t work too well for microphones where long lengths are used and there is a pretty good chance of noise being introduced.

My problem came when you have dual shields in a cable. Do you connect it the standard way and ignore a shield? Do you wire both shields together and follow the standard connect it at both ends? Or you could do the third option which is what I did, connect in the standard way but leave the outer second shield disconnected at the receiving end (Second Diagram).

If I were wiring for analog use then I would follow the audiophile method and leave the ground disconnected at one end, For all other uses including microphones, digital interconnects the method pictured above should be great!

Just a quick recap: