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I have a small mixer (Soundcraft Spirit Folio Lite) with 2 AUX sends that I want to use for monitoring. I'm plugging one of those AUX sends to the CD/MP3 in of my POD HD500X guitar multieffect so I can hear other instruments while playing the guitar.

I know that AUX sends in this interface are mono and that they require a balanced cable (TRS) so I've used this kind of cable to connect AUX send with POD HD500X. But because the signal is mono I can hear other instruments only on either left or right speaker or headphone that I have connected to POD.

I'm looking for a way to have this mono signal heard on both speakers. I don't need to have a stereo signal comming from the mixer, if I could hear the same mono sound, just on both speakers would be enough for me.

Couple of things I've considered:

  1. Using a mono TS plug to TRS socket adapter between mixer and POD - this probably will not work as the TS in unbalanced
  2. Using a mic amp like Behringer MA400 between mixer and POD. It has a switch for mono/stereo on the input, but I'm not sure if it'll work in my case as the documentation for it says that it expects either unbalanced stereo TRS plug or unbalanced mono TS plug. There's not a mention that it'll work with balanced mono TRS plug and that the mono/stereo switch could then be used to split the mono signal so it could be heard on both speakers.
  3. Using the AUX IN of the POD instead of CD/MP3 in - doesn't work as expected because the signal is then processed by all effect I have set up for the guitar

What's the best way forward from where I am?

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2 Answers 2

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I've finally sorted this issue out. It turned out I don't need to have a headphone amp for this and all I really have to use is some cables and adapters.

The connection I have now is this:

  1. TRS plug Y-adapter to dual TRS socket (duplicates the mono signal to two mono signals)
  2. 2xTS - TRS cable (TS plugged to TRS sockets, TRS plugged to CD/MP3 in of POD HD500X)

It works exactly the way I wanted it by having the dual-mono "stereo" - hearing the same mono signal on both ears.

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I would structure things significantly differently. Why are you going through the POD at all instead of monitoring off the board. Monitoring both your guitar and other sources off the board will likely give you a clearer view of how things are processed and mixed by the board (depending on how the aux sends are wired up).

If you are using headphones, you could use a headphone line directly from the board. If you are using an amp, then you can either go in to a reverse DB to go from balanced to unbalanced (thus making use of the balanced line for noise reduction) or simply drop the one line entirely and treat it as a mono signal/ground line by ignoring the sleeve.

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  • No I can't do that as I'm using this mixer for monitoring when playing with a friend. We just want to have independent mixes and that's why we are using aux sends for this purpose. I can' connect two pairs of headphones to the mixing board and have each of them assigned separate mix.
    – RaYell
    Dec 13, 2014 at 7:36
  • @RaYell - in that case you should still ideally use the aux out and go directly to a headphone amp or in-ear monitor unit, though you can always simply drop the extra line like I mentioned and use it with your pod. The balanced line is an extra feature, you don't need the third conductor.
    – AJ Henderson
    Dec 13, 2014 at 18:52
  • Yeah, but the question is if I use the headphone amp and feed it with mono signal will I still be able to hear it on both ears or will I only hear it in one as I currently do without headphone amp.
    – RaYell
    Dec 14, 2014 at 15:20

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