Full fit
3.5 mm TRS jack
The intended pairing.
3.5 mm TRS plug
Three-conductor eighth-inch plug. The common stereo headphone and line plug.
Contacts
| Position | Name |
|---|---|
| 1 | tip |
| 2 | ring |
| 3 | sleeve |
What it mates with
Mating is directional, so the two lists below are genuinely different: a TS plug in a TRS socket and a TRS plug in a TS socket short different things.
3.5 mm TRS plug used as the plug
Partial fit
3.5 mm TS jack
- shortThe plug's ring lands on the jack's sleeve, shorting the right channel to ground.
Partial fit
3.5 mm TRRS jack (CTIA)
A stereo plug in a headset socket. Audio usually works and the microphone never does, which is exactly the kind of failure that looks like a broken device.
- shiftThe plug is one contact short, so its sleeve lands on the jack's ring 2 rather than its sleeve. Ground arrives on the ground contact by luck of the CTIA pinout, but every contact after the ring is displaced by one position.
- openThe jack's sleeve, which is the microphone contact on a CTIA headset socket, is never reached. A headset socket expecting a microphone sees an open circuit and may report no headset at all.
3.5 mm TRS plug used as the receptacle
Nothing recorded with this connector as the receptacle.