The cable, ends, and assembly are of good quality but the XLR end is wired incorrectly from the factory. The L&R wires from the 3.5mm end should be wired to sum the left and right into one pin in the XLR but nope! They are wired to separate pins. This makes for some very interesting results. Some of the audio signal will come through but a lot will cancel itself out. The reason this is wired wrong is because the cable is going in-between unbalanced (3.5mm) and balanced (XLR) equipment.

If you look at a competing cable from another manufacturer (like CableMatters), it will be wired the way it should be. Not sure why Monoprice decided to wire this wrong.

To correct this I had to cut the wire going into pin 3 in the XLR and move it to pin 2. The end result has both L&R (tip and ring of the 3.5mm) going into pin 2 of the XLR. Not the end of the world but this will not work correctly out of the box for virtually all applications (phone/PC into a mixer or speaker).