It has some very significant design flaws. The ground pin is connected last, and while a plug is being inserted or removed the connections get all jumbled up an

It has some very significant design flaws. The ground pin is connected last, and while a plug is being inserted or removed the connections get all jumbled up and even shorted together. This causes all sorts of hums, crackles, and pops while inserting or removing a plug, which may be only a minor annoyance for headphone users but can be extremely loud and/or damaging when using large amps & speakers. (It's also very easy to only insert a plug partially by mistake, which can take frustratingly long to troubleshoot.) They also typically carry unbalanced signals and are therefore susceptible to interference at high impedances and/or long distances. Pro audio equipment usually prefers connectors such as XLR [0] (or even heavier-duty cables like Speakon [1] if you need to carry large amounts of power). They're a lot bulkier but immune to all these problems: the ground pin connects first, the connector physically latches into place, and they're typically used to carry a balanced signal over a twisted pair so they're mostly immune to interference. The only place you'll find a TS/TRS connector on a stage is on a "patch cable" for making short-distance connections, like from a guitar to an amp -- and you have to be very careful not to touch them unless the sound guy tells you it's OK, because those pops will be loud over a PA. Newer (and more expensive) equipment is moving in the direction of avoiding analog altogether and transmitting audio over Ethernet using protocols like Dante [2]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLR_connector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLR_connector [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakon_connector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakon_connector [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_(networking)