Instrument and playback jack leads in 6.35mm and 3.5mm formats from W Audio, led by the 1.5m stereo minijack to twin 6.35mm mono jack breakout, the standard way to get a laptop, phone or controller headphone output into two mixer channels.

Terminology matters more than price here. TS jacks, tip and sleeve, are unbalanced and carry instrument or unbalanced line signals; TRS jacks add a ring and carry either a balanced mono signal or unbalanced stereo, and which one you have depends entirely on the sockets at each end. Splitting a stereo minijack source to two mono jacks is the correct way to feed a mixer: the breakout keeps left and right on separate channels with their own gain controls, whereas forcing a stereo plug into a single mono input sums the channels and can partially cancel anything panned wide.

Keep unbalanced jack runs short. A few metres is fine, but longer runs pick up hum and lose top end to cable capacitance, so move the signal onto balanced lines as early as possible, and remember a DI box remains the proper fix for a long run from an unbalanced source. If a lead will live on a stage rather than in a studio, treat it as a consumable and carry a spare, because the plug and the last few centimetres of cable take the strain every time it is coiled.

XLR leads and phono interconnects sit in the neighbouring child categories under Audio.