Phone connector (audio)
family of connector typically used for analog signals
A phone connector is a family of cylindrically shaped electrical connectors primarily for analog audio signals. Invented in the late 19th century for telephone switchboards, the phone connector remains in use for interfacing wired audio equipment, such as headphones, speakers, microphones, mixing consoles, and electronic musical instruments (e.g. electric guitars, keyboards, and effects units). A male connector (a plug), is mated into a female connector (a socket), though other terminology is used.
Plugs have two to five electrical contacts. The tip contact is indented with a groove. The sleeve contact is nearest the (conductive or insulated) handle. Contacts are insulated from each other by a band of non-conductive material. Between the tip and sleeve are zero to three ring contacts. Since phone connectors have many uses, it is common to simply name the connector according to its number of rings:
The sleeve is usually a common ground reference voltage or return current for signals in the tip and any rings.
“Phone connector (audio)” enters the record as family of connector typically used for analog signals. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Phone, connector and audio can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q394226. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Phone connector (audio)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.