Pono Player Balanced Interconnect Cable

So you've taken the plunge on Neil Young's sweet little Pono player, however it uses a unique way to export those tunes to your balanced headphones or balanced rig. I'll be covering how I built an unbalanced cable, and how to build a balanced pair of cables so you can extract every juicy detail from those Hi Res tracks. As you may know, Zynsonix Audio offers these in any length or configuration, so reach out if you need one.

The Pono player features dual stereo 3.5mm outputs. You can use these to output to a pair of balanced headphones, a balanced rig that uses 3 pin XLRs (or mini XLRs / TRS plugs), or a single ended rig that takes good-old-fashioned RCAs.

Neil Young's Pono Player

Stereo 3.5mm connectors have three connections, the sleeve, the ring and the tip. When used in typical applications, the sleeve is a shared ground, the ring is the right signal, and the tip is the left signal. However not the case with the Pono in balanced mode.

Tip, Ring and Sleeve on a 3.5mm mini connector

In the case of the Pono player in balanced mode, each of the two 3.5mm goes to an individual three pin XLR. The Sleeve, as you'll note below, connects to the Pin 1 (ground). The Ring connects to Pin 3 (negative). The Tip connects to Pin 2 (positive). For a balanced headphone cable, you will note that the Sleeve connection is not used, only the tip (positive) and the ring (negative). These schematics are straight from the engineers over at Ayre Acoustics. If I'm not mistaken, this is going to be the portable standard for balanced connections including on upcoming models from Sony.

Pono Player wiring pinout / diagram

I made a handy dandy visual for the back of an XLR connector (note mini XLRs are different!) so you can see the pin assignments.

XLR pinout for reference

Below you'll see the pair of 3.5mm stereo mini to XLR cables using the great sounding Zynsonix Trebuchet 99.99997% pure ohno cast copper. The Viablue XLRs are very sleek looking, well made and use set screws rather than a traditional boot or crimp sleeve. The Amphenol mini connectors are my new favorite value connector, they offer a great connection and a recessed area near the barrel that allow them to be used with phone cases and portable DAPs with cramped faceplates.   

Pono balanced interconnect cable

All done and we have a pretty pair of Trebuchet interconnects for your Pono player. Off they go to a happy customer.

I hope you enjoyed this post on building a pair of interconnects for a Pono Player. Please reach out to Zynsonix Audio if you'd like your own custom Pono interconnects (balanced or single ended) or headphone cable, and keep enjoying those high res tracks!

The Fine Print:

The above steps detailing the build of a Pono player cable are for entertainment purposes only, and not intended to be used as assembly instructions. The owner of this blog and all associated parties can not / will not be held responsible if you attempt the process posted and cause physical harm to yourself, your surroundings or your property. 

Custom RCA Switch Box for Audio

So in any given audio setup there may be multiple amplifiers (e.g. a headphone amp, speaker amp, etc.) or possibly multiple sources (e.g. a record player, CD player, DAC from a computer, etc.). A switch box keeps it simple so one doesn't have to reach in the back of the rack and manually switch interconnects to listen to particular equipment. They will commonly have multiple RCA jacks (or in some cases XLR jacks) for both input and output and a switch which is commonly 2 pole (stereo with common ground) or 4 pole (stereo with isolated grounds).

They may be handy, but not all switch boxes are created equally; audio enthusiast know that using a generic one can potentially degrade the audio quality, a situation which just isn't worth the added convenience. All the ingredients need to be of high quality to ensure there is no notable degradation of the signal.

This post will be detailing a simple 6-to-1 switch box making use of high quality parts to ensure transparency. Parts include a Swiss-made Elma 04-1264 switch, EAR isolation feet, Philmore Teflon insulated gold plated RCAs, Neotech UP-OCC sold-core copper wire in Teflon and a lovely custom-made chassis from Keith (ebay seller po1019).

The first task was to take the chassis and drill holes for the switch, feet, and RCA connectors. It may be easy to use a ruler and mark where each hole is going to be, but drilling the holes perfectly in line *probably* won't happen, even on a drill press. When there are multiple items lined up, the eye can very easily identify any slight aberrations to a straight line. I was able to get them pretty close in this case. The chassis was then powder-coated a nice cream color.

Chassis prepped for the build process

The next process is installing the RCAs. Because the powdercoat insulates the aluminum, the back of the holes were filed so the RCAs would ground to the chassis so the chassis would act as a shield. You might be gawking at the Philmore RCA blister pack and thinking "wow, that looks like dollar store garbage"... Looks can be deceiving; under the homely packaging are a pair of very nice quality gold RCAs with Teflon insulation. I like to use Cardas RCAs in many of my builds, but when one is using seven pair, like in this case, that would be quite costly; that's where the Philmores come into play. Each one is cranked on using a socket wrench and the ground washer bent at 90 degrees. 

The chassis populated with Philmore RCAs

Each of the ground washers is then tweaked together with a pair of pliers and a ground wire is run through them, then soldered in place. This particular wire is silver but any bus wire would be fine. This ensures that there is a common ground between all inputs and outputs. 

Ground wire connected to each RCA

Now comes the fun part; wiring up each RCA to the Elma switch. Seeing which solder lug corresponds to each switch position is relatively straight forward, simply look through the transparent plastic at the location of the gold contacts. Each wire is soldered in place and a small amount of heatshrink is placed over the connection. 

Beginning the wiring process

The Neotech wire was kept nice and short for each connection. On the bottom, EAR isolation feet were fitted with a screw, lock washer and nut.

Wiring complete

The box could now be assembled and the nicely finished wood panels placed on the sides. Below are a few photos of the finished product.

Switchbox complete!

Switchbox Front

Switchbox Rear

Switchbox Bottom

Some nice points about this design are the short signal paths thanks to the small chassis, the Teflon insulated wire and RCAs, the gold contacts on the switch and the point to point wiring with no circuit board for the signal to run through. This box could either be used to allow 6 inputs and 1 output, or 1 input and 6 outputs. With a larger box and a second switch, there could be both multiple inputs *and* outputs. Or there could be two of these boxes daisy-chained, allowing for 6 inputs and 6 outputs. Tons of options!

Update: I created a nice little logo "iO" standing for input output and had it custom engraved on a brass plate for the top panel. Looks rather sharp I think :) Some additional photographs with the plate are below.

Need a great sounding passive audio switchbox to tie your system together? Please contact Zynsonix Audio for details. 

The Fine Print:
The above steps detailing the building of a switch box are for entertainment purposes only and not to be performed under any circumstances. The owner of this blog and all associated parties can not / will not be held responsible if you attempt the process posted and cause physical harm to yourself, your surroundings or your property. Please keep this in mind.