TS, TRS and TRRS Cable - What's The Difference | TS vs TRS vs TRRS

TS, TRS or TRRS. In five minutes you'll find out what are the differences and how to recognize them. Hello everyone this is Ahmed Dan of ahmeddan.com. Today I'll have another episode of all your cable tips and tricks video and I'll talk about the differences between TS, TRS and TRRS. If this is your first time or if you visit, thank you for your support on this hybrid channel. I'm always trying new and different ideas to take you beyond boundaries. If you're into thinking outside the box this is the channel for you. If you're looking for more tips and tricks videos there'll be links in the description box below. So I was very confused in the past about TS, TRS and TRRS and what happened even I bought in a wrong cables because I just made a slight mistake. So for example this is a cable here which is TRRS to TRS converter but by mistake I bought it you know I wanted to buy TRS to TRRS. So basically this cable I bought it's like you know 10-15 dollars the whole money is wasted. So in this video I'm going to talk about and I'm going to show you how you can recognize what type of cables is it and what are the purposes and you know what exactly they do. So you're not going to be you're going to have a good idea about all these three types of cables after watching this video. TS stands for tip sleeve and TRS stands for tip ring sleeve and then we have TRRS which stands for tip ring ring sleeve. So S is sleeve and R is ring and T is tip. Now they come in different you know sizes there's like you know quarter inch one by eight inch or 2.5 millimeter but I'm just going to not go into that because you know that could be more complicated. So basically these are the cables which are audio cables or connectors that connect your mobile phone to a mic or your laptop to a mic or any audio cable or you know any audio recorder one to each other. So the TS is the simple one and I'm just going to go to TS but before I do that the S stands for sleeve or which is the ground and it is for shielding purposes. So this is the you know end of the cable. So for example here we have a TRRS cable and if you take a close look then here we have the tip right here which is always going to be the top portion or the first front portion and the sleeve part is kind of the end part and this is used for grounding or shielding and basically this is going to be present in all these three types of cable and the purpose of this just to ground or shield. So that's what sleeve for. So now let's move on to our first TS. So TS actually is just you know tip sleeve that's the meaning tip sleeve TS and this is for mono signaling or mono audio transfer purposes. So it has one solid sound signal because this is mono and then one black ring on the head. Now the thing is I don't have an example for this because this is not common and most likely you're not going to be come across the TS cables or connectors unless you are in the audio field or you deal with like you know sound or sound engineering or that kind of stuff but this is not too common. So I don't have an example of this. So this is just a basic cable which is going to have for example just a tip and you know one ring. So I don't have an example this is just I'm showing here. So that's TS but you're not going to come across a lot with this type of cable. Now let's move on to the next one which is the TRS. This is you're going to come across a lot. So for example this is for stereo sound transfer purposes and it has two contacts and one is left and one is right channel. So that's the purpose of the stereo. So it has two black ring on the head and it has you know so all together it has three conductors. So let's take a TRS cable here. So this is a TRS cable from my camera and let me see if I have another TRS cable here and this is another TRS cable from my audio recorder or from my mic which I'm coming to you very shortly. So now if you take a look here then you're going to see that it has two connector. So basically it has the slip part which is right here right here and the tip part is right here and you're going to see two black rings on the head. So for example if you carefully look at the ring right here. Okay I hope camera can show you properly. This is too small to for the camera to catch. So here's two black one two so tip and sleeve and the ring you're going to see two black bars because this is a TRS cable. So this type of cable whenever you have a camera or audio recorder or stereo like you know equipment this is what you're going to come across. For example this is an audio recorder and this is TRS you know cable. So right here the part or the hole you're seeing here is for TRS cable. Now the audio recorder I'm using right now here this is actually active right now and this is the one which I'm using right now. As you can see the bar and this is actually also TRS. So you can see that you know this is connecting here and this is a TRS cable. So just you know set this aside here. Now I have a mic here this one you can connect it to like you know audio recorder or your camera and you can even connect this to your phone but then you're going to have to just use a different cable. So now this is also TRS. For example this is Sennheiser and the cable they provided they provided one for regular audio recorder or camera and they provided one for cell phone or mobile phone. Now if you take a look at the camera one then very carefully pay attention right here and you're going to see that this is TRS. So it has one tip and two ring and here two black like you know bar and then the sleep part is right here. So TRS is always going to have two connectors or two black ring on the end and then it has the you know the conductor is right here and then this is the TRS and this is the cable usually you're going to come across for audio recorder, camera and then camcorder or any type of like you know video equipment. So this is what you're going to come across. Now take a look at this. This is the smartphone part. So here it says smartphone okay. Now you can see that this is TRS which is going to the audio recorder or the mic right here sorry right here and this part is going to your cell phone and this is a different type of cable. This is TRRS which I'm coming to within a second. So that's what it is and this is for like you know common camera, audio recorder, recording equipment, stereo equipment that type of sort. You're going to use TRS. So it just means that you know it has two channels. It's stereo and you're going to see always two black ring and one tip. So that's TRS. Now this is TRS and this is going to be more interesting because this is what you're going to use most of the time because this is what you know goes inside your cell phone or laptop or tablet that kind of stuff. So this is this has two left channel and right channel. Also it comes with an added microphone channel. So that's the purpose you're going to see that you know there are three rings and here we're looking at TRRS. So for example here's we have tip and the ring is going to be always three black bar right here or black circle. So you can see that you know one two three and this is the shielding or ground. So this is TRRS and this can fit into your phone and you can you know record on your phone connecting to the audio recorder via TRRS. Now also this is for headset or earbud. So if you have like you know headset or earbud which has a connection or cable connection then most likely that's going to be TRRS as well. So now the advantage of this that you know it has a microphone channel. So for that if you have a cable or a mic that has you can connect to your phone and talk at the same time then it's going to be TRRS. For example here you can see that two three black ring right here and the tip. So this is TRRS and this is to you know talk to your phone. So this is always going to be TRRS and it's always going to have like you know three black ring in the middle and so all together it has four conductors but this is TRRS tip ring ring sleeve. And this is the most common one if you have a phone. So let's say if you have a phone and you want to connect it to an audio recorder or a mic to record then if you're just like you know using the cable provided by the mic is TRRS this is not going to work. So what you have to do you have to you need a like a converter so which is going to be this this side TRRS is going to go into your phone for example right here and here it has TRRS output or it has output for the audio recorder or the mic to connect to and then you have to just you know use that to connect to your phone and that's how it's going to work. So again the most important ones are the one you're going to like you know always come across are going to be actually TRS and TRRS which is right here and they stand for tip ring sleeve tip ring ring sleeve and you can just easily tell them by looking at how many bars they have. So for example the one which goes with your phone or with your laptop they're going to have the maximum number of bars which are like you know three bars and that's going to take a little bit look a little bit longer and if you see a little bit shorter with two black bars or two black two black ring then definitely that's your camera or recording equipment that's not going to work directly to your phone and TS is not that common I don't have it so I couldn't show you anything. Thank you for watching this video for the next video I'm going to put a link on the screen I'll see you in the next video. Thank you for watching.