Lexicon Klinke

Jack is the short form for the jack plug, a plug format that is widely used in various sizes in audio technology. A distinction is made between jack plugs with three different diameters:

  • The 6.35mm standard jack plug

The 3.5mm mini jack

  • The 2.5mm submini jack

At its simplest, each of these variants comes in a 2-pin mono design, with a sleeve and a tip insulated from it. The sleeve is always used for the ground connection. Of all diameters, there is also a 3-pole stereo version with an additional ring between the tip and the sleeve, where the ring carries the right channel. The stereo variant is also used to some extent for symmetrical signals, where the ring is used for the return line, so only one channel is transmitted.

There are also special versions of the smaller jacks for more poles (e.g. 4-pole), which is used for some PC sound cards, mobile phones and other portable devices where space saving is important.

The best known application of jack plugs in the hi-fi sector is as headphone connectors. Here you will mainly find the standard jack and the mini jack, both in the stereo version. In music electronics, the standard jack is widely used both in mono and in stereo, e.g. for connecting instruments and in patchbays.

The standard jack is a quite robust connector, in contrast to its smaller siblings, which - often due to inferior manufacturing quality - tend to have contact problems. The standard jack is often used in cases where the connector has to be changed frequently. One problem can be that a short-circuit can occur between the contacts for a short time during mating, which must be taken into account in the design of the devices.

See also:

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