"TheKeith" wrote in message ...

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either a stereo signal with two
unbalanced mono channels in the tip and sleeve, or a balanced mono channel
(which utilizes both the tip and the sleeve for the one channel of sound

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A TRS used for stereo, like say the plug on the end of a headphone
cable, uses the sleeve (the longest part) as common or "ground", the
ring for one channel's "hot" (usually the right) and the tip for the
other channel's hot (usually the left).
Someone once said that the nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them. You can't always count on different brand gear
from different years agreeing on what goes to the tip and what to the
ring, but I'm going to say that sleeve is almost always "ground"
because I have yet (in nearly a half century) to see it not be, but
remember, I only said "almost always".