The name might be an oxymoron , like the jazz walk-in " Ugly Beauty , " but there ’s nothing off - headstone about transposing electrical signals to light waving to pitch hefty , high - character audio . It ’s but another interval in the evolution of audio , as progressive as Thelonious Monk ’s writing . From mono to stereo tosurround auditory sensation , or from parallel to digital to in high spirits - def , the heartbeat goes on .
Once upon a prison term , TVs and stereos were just heavy small-arm of wooden furniture . They were self - contained , and their input or outputs were limited to antenna hookups and verbalizer jacks . Today , we face up a wall ’s Charles Frederick Worth of tuners , amplifiers , game consoles , DVRs , VCR , videodisk , Blu - rays and moribund VHS machine , to say nothing of the cassette player you keep moving but probably have n’t even bothered to hook up .
What are all those jacks for , anyway ?
Just as you would n’t shriek Pellegrino through rusty municipal plumbing , there ’s no point in sending high-pitched - fi sound through low - fi jacks , wire and electronics . So , as companies dream up better audio frequency and video standards and storage medium , they also summate new ways to send it sharply from your gear to your spike , which is why the backs of our amusement systems resemble a 1960s Manhattan switchboard .
It ’s an disposed comparison , considering that the first analog sound tar , thetriple contact sparking plug , orTRS connexion , was adapted from the labourer first used in telephone exchanges . Thetip , ring andsleeve pattern , in which three insulated incision of the prong handled left channel , right channel and ground , severally , was so successful that it is still widely used today [ source : International Textbook Company ; Modern Home Theater ] .
The Radio Corporation of America debuted its eponymousRCA jacksin the late 1940s , but the format did n’t climb up to the top of the chart until the early ' 70 . Like the Supremes , these plugs come in groups of three – typically red , ashen and xanthous – each lie of a sign - carrying peg encircled by a ground ring [ source : Modern Home Theater ] . Other versions of RCA jacks carry composite and component video , as well as digital sound .
Component and composite cables carry picture signals but no sound . Composite cable , ordinarily designate by a scandalmongering RCA jack , pack all of the video info into one sign , whereas ingredient ones break open it into three channels across three plug [ rootage : Maxim Integrated Products ] .
Both command a separate line to manage audio frequency , which impart us back to RCA jacks and other copper - wire solutions – and an alternative , optical audio .
Cu - free-base wire fence with two problems to varying academic degree , look on their shielding and quality : external electromagnetic stochasticity step in with the signal and resistance in the wire degrading the signal over length .
Optical sound is resistant to the first and can be barren of the 2nd if the transmission line quality is high enough , but it also has its own share of problems .
The Laser Light Show, or Tangled Up in Blu-ray
As anyone who has lived with a bad landline connection or a weak signaling from the cablegram box can tell you , signal debasement can really ruin your day .
Copper , which still provides the essence of most wiring , can hurt significant signaling abjection over space . coaxal cable– used to transmit telly , telephone and calculator web signal – comes packed with shielding to prevent signal bleed - off , but loss due to electric resistance still damp the sign over distance . shield sound recording line let in some protection from outside noise , but suffer the same resistor issues [ germ : National Instruments ] .
as luck would have it , we havefiber optic .
Fiber - optic cables offer the kind of low sign loss and high data rates that telephone andInternetusers demand by transmitting information as light through slender charge plate or glass wires . These cable havetotal inner coefficient of reflection , meaning that light bounces along inside them without escaping . Glass fibers can convey such " lossless " signal over great distances without needing a power boost [ sources : Encyclopaedia Britannica;Wood ] .
By the same nominal , optical sound delivers higher - lineament auditory sensation than Old copper - wire connectors by converting electric signals to ignite and piping them through optical fibre .
The age of optical audio dawned in the 1980s , when Toshiba createdToslink , the first optical audio frequency cable system . The Nipponese electronics party had developed its own compact disc player and was looking for a room to output the improved digital audio quality to speakers and headphones . Appropriately , Toshiba select an ocular solution for candle , an ocular storage culture medium [ sources : Modern Home Theater;Toshiba ] .
In an optical audio frequency setup , the digital electrical signal from the source – say , a DVD instrumentalist – is converted into light by a gadget call atransmission module . In Toslink , this module consists of an LED , or light - emitting junction rectifier , and a drive circuit , normally sent through charge plate fiber , whereas ST Fiber Optic uses Methedrine fiber and a cherry-red laser light at a 680 - micromillimetre - wavelength [ sources : Modern Home Theater;Toshiba ] . The sign then speeds along the optical cable to the goal machine , usually a television system or audio telephone receiver , where alightreception moduleconverts it back into a digital electrical signal . From there , the twist convey it to your speakers or headphones .
Because it place only phone , an optic audio line is ordinarily used with a video - only cable length , such as DVI ( Digital Visual Interface ) or S - telecasting .
So , what ’s the pinch ? Well , optical cables tend to be moderately brittle , and the plastic ones are not as lossless as their glass counterparts . The reconversion of light into an electric signal has been known to introduce errors . More to the percentage point , however , some argue that HDMI ( see sidebar ) has rendered the format moot [ beginning : Johnson ] .
Who is right ? As with most arguments among audiophiles , the truth is in the ear of the listener .
After days of feeling lost in the data formatting , I tackled this clause with a combination of agitation and trepidation .
On the one deal , I hoped that , at long last , I might decipher the alphabet soup , untangle the mass of cablegram and careen in the rhetoric to discover just what all those jacks were for . On the other hand , my previous forays into the airfield hinted that my hope for clearness might terminate up quelled .
It ’s not that I ’m a technophobe – quite the antonym . I can kick upstairs my own electronic computer ( although , avowedly , that used to be a bunch easier ) and , in college , I help my mom program her videocassette recorder so many time that I could talk her through it blindly over the sound , like a tower jockey walk a non - pilot through landing a 747 .
It ’s just that , somewhere along the line , a few cables became many , the people of color codes ceased to signify what I remember they mean and the number of prongs stop corresponding to the number of jackstones .
More than that , though , it was that no one could give me a uncoiled solution as to which solution was the best . There ’s a reason for that , and it ’s the chief trip up pulley-block to publish an article about consumer electronics : The creation of audio recording is infuse more in lore than in concentrated facts ; there ’s as much snake oil in those wire as speech sound .
I did my best to maneuver clear of the hoopla and to stick to the fact . As far as they go , they say that the choice depends on your equipment and how you intend to use it – oh , and whether you ’ve already lost so much high and low range to loud music and age that fancy cables no longer matter .
combative , normative motion like " good " and " worst " are best leave to the audiophile , if for no other reason than there is simply no clear - slew answer . Do n’t think me ? Try walking into a guitar shop and inquire for the good adenosine monophosphate .
