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rca cable with red white and yellow plugs

Steve Rogers

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If I use an RCA male to male with 3 strands (red white yellow) for stereo and leave the yellows unconnected does this effect audio quality?
 
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If I use an RCA male to male with 3 strands (red white yellow) for stereo and leave the yellows unconnected does this effect audio quality?

No. The original purpose of those cables was for composite video, the yellow was for the video signal. So that should tell you something about their quality.
 

sergeauckland

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No. The original purpose of those cables was for composite video, the yellow was for the video signal. So that should tell you something about their quality.

That they are close to 75 ohm impedance, as composite video will give ghosting due to reflections if it isn't. The other two will be the same, so perfectly suitable for analogue audio. By the way, the yellow cable will also be perfectly suitable for S-PDIF digital audio.
Those red-white-yellow cables are very useful.
S.
 
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Steve Rogers

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That they are close to 75 ohm impedance, as composite video will give ghosting due to reflections if it isn't. The other two will be the same, so perfectly suitable for analogue audio. By the way, the yellow cable will also be perfectly suitable for S-PDIF digital audio.
Those red-white-yellow cables are very useful.
S.
I am using it for output from dac to power amp.

when you say yellow are good for spdif whys that, they look like any other rca not like an optical plug?
 

sergeauckland

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I am using it for output from dac to power amp.

when you say yellow are good for spdif whys that, they look like any other rca not like an optical plug?
S-PDIF works over coax as well as optical. The audio data is identical to AES-EBU, both 110ohm balanced and 75 ohm unbalanced. The differences between these formats is in voltage levels and some of the data bits that define whether the stream is audio, professional or consumer, copy protected or not, and signals what the sample rate is. The audio part of the stream is the same.

S
 
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