Considering the 1/4” jack has been around for literal eons (1877, no joke), there’s sort of just tradition when you compare it to the 3.5mm from the 1950s. The primary reason being durability. Your guitar is probably going to be yanked on pretty rough a few times compared to something as little as a phone that will just rip out of your hand. On the guitar, it’d probably damage the port pretty quickly.
That’s interesting. So there’s no major signal degradation or limit between the two cable sizes? I always assumed it was something like that that would make the larger jack preferable.
Not really. Until you get down to really small sizes, the human ear can’t perceive the signal noise. If you’re recording at a full studio level, the lower the noise floor, the better, and thicker cables/ports are better, but for most indie stuff, 3.5mm would suffice just fine for audio quality. Also, if you amping the signal like crazy, that could theoretically help with noise.
Considering the 1/4” jack has been around for literal eons (1877, no joke), there’s sort of just tradition when you compare it to the 3.5mm from the 1950s. The primary reason being durability. Your guitar is probably going to be yanked on pretty rough a few times compared to something as little as a phone that will just rip out of your hand. On the guitar, it’d probably damage the port pretty quickly.
That’s interesting. So there’s no major signal degradation or limit between the two cable sizes? I always assumed it was something like that that would make the larger jack preferable.
Not really. Until you get down to really small sizes, the human ear can’t perceive the signal noise. If you’re recording at a full studio level, the lower the noise floor, the better, and thicker cables/ports are better, but for most indie stuff, 3.5mm would suffice just fine for audio quality. Also, if you amping the signal like crazy, that could theoretically help with noise.