RCA Audio Cables - Constantly Getting Better

The most commonly used audio cables are called RCA audio cables. They name, as you may have guessed, derives from the company that invented them; the Radio Corporation of America.

Back in the 1940’s, these cables were developed to connect mono phonographs to amplifiers. The jacks made popular by RCA soon replaced the then very common and quite large TRS jacks we all know from those manual telephone switchboards. TRS stands for tip, ring, and sleeve, which describes the composition of the jack and the contacts it makes.

Once stereo audio became the norm with the onset of the Hi Fidelity music systems, RCA cables had to be used in pairs, one for each channel. Soon, an RCA audio cable combining two cables into one casing will simplify wiring.

RCA audio cables are terminated by connectors which are commonly male, and plug into the female jacks at the back of the audio component. The connectors are color coded to correspond to each speaker. White marks the connector to the left speaker and red is used for the right speaker. Some older cables may not have the color markers, and in most cases the sides are interchangeable, so you need not worry.

The most advanced RCA audio cables use the color orange in the termination, for cables which transmit digital audio which is S/PDIF formatted. S/PDIF stands for Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format, the standard protocol used for transmitting encoded digital audio signals. It is obvious by the name that Sony and Philips jointly developed this standard, and today it is widely used.

RCA audio cables are readily available and inexpensive, ranging in price from under $5 to cables with gold plated RCA audio jacks, and digital quality transmission cables for significantly more. RCA audio cables, like all cables, should be handled with care. Inside the cable, the conducting filament can be stretched and break. The cable should be anchored carefully, and be stored and keep out of reach.

Now that images often accompany sounds, there is an RCA cable which combines audio and composite video signal transmission. This cable has three very similar plug connectors at each end, and though the color coding in white and red for the audio is maintained, a yellow plug is added for the video signal. As technology advances, new colors were added for cable terminations used for different input and output from such recent features and components as digital cameras and camcorders.

As the complexity of the audiovisual equipment in our homes advances, you will find that you need additional RCA cables to interconnect your components, such as, for example, for a surround-sound home theater, which will probably allow you to enjoy digital sound, that is if you install it using an orange coded RCA audio cable. As a flash from the past, the white coded RCA audio jack still corresponds to, and can be used for, a mono sound signal, all we had before stereo sound became the norm, and quadrophonic and surround-sound already look like they will become the new standard.