When shopping for audio equipment leaves you wanting to pull your hair out, and throw your new equipment out the window, sit back, and relax, FireFold is here to rescue you! I’m sure at one point you’ve pulled out your new audio receive and thought to yourself “what the heck are all these different connections? This stuff used to be so simple, one or two wires and that’s it!” If you’re not too familiar with audio on the market today, FireFold would like to help you to become more aware of the things available, and what they can do for you. Our all-audio guide will make you into a tech-savvy geek (ok, maybe not a geek…but knowledgeable)

TOSLINK:

If you’re the non-tech type you probably have not heard of TOSLINK connections, as they are of a pretty specialized nature. They are a connection for fiber optic digital audio cables. Fiber optic cables are made out of glass or plastic whose purpose is to carry light along the length of the cable. The fibers are better to use to carry signal along, due to its consistency over metal wires. Metal wires have a higher chance of signal loss than glass or plastic. The fiber optic cable also transmits at a higher bandwidth compared to other forms of communication. Another benefit of fiber optic cables is that they are not interrupted by electromagnetic interferences. TOSLINK provides a super high-quality signal, even at very high volume levels.

TOSLINK most commonly is used for audio purposes. It was originally created by Toshiba, hence the name TOShibaLINK. They used it to connect their CD players to their own receivers. Eventually other manufactures were given rights to reproduce the cables to use for their own purposes, mostly CD players. Today you can find TOSLINK used to connect DVD players as well as game consoles to Dolby Digital/DTS decoders. On apple computers Mini-TOSLINK or standard TOSLINK jacks are present to hook up to a home theater system for awesome sound performance. We sell Mini-Toslink adapters here at FireFold, as well as our standard TOSLINK cables. On a Mac that only has a Mini-TOSLINK input, we recommend buying a TOSLINK cable and a Mini-TOSLINK adapter. We sell TOSLINK cables in two different jacket (cable protector) sizes: 2.2MM and 6.0MM. The 6.0MM jacket will help to prevent cable damage as well as providing strain relief. We get many questions about which jacket size should they use for a specific application. There is NO quality difference with different jacket sizes. If you have any intentions of moving the wire around multiple times, we recommend going with the 6.0MM as it’s more durable. If you are just hooking the cable up to the back of your TV and will rarely move it, we recommend the 2.2MM cable. At FireFold we also sell a TOSLINK Male to 3.5MM Female Adapter to go from an older stereo that only has a 3.5MM plug to a newer device that only has TOSLINK.

TOSLINK is a very useful cable if you want something that is going to provide a high-quality signal and don’t have extra composite/component cables, or are working on a budget; as our cables are very affordable compared to the competition.

Digital Coax:

One of our less common cables we’re going discuss is digital coaxial cables. This is a topic that there is not much information readily available about, but is surprisingly a highly used cable. We would like to inform you about the different types of technology available in the market place, especially ones we sell at FireFold. A digital coaxial cable looks the same as an RCA cable, such as our component or composite cables. It differs in the fact that it doesn’t send analog signals like RCA cables do, but sends a signal in all digital. Interchanging an RCA cable for a Digital Coaxial cable works very poorly due to the RCA cable not being internally shielded like a Digital Coaxial cable, also, the RCA cable cannot transmit at the bandwidth that the Coaxial cable can. The Digital Coaxial has 75-ohm of impedance, and shielding for the cable, which allows the signal to be transmitted without hindrance over extended lengths. If you try and use an RCA cable in place of a Digital Coaxial cable over long lengths (25+ feet) you will notice the audio will have significant lag, and will stutter. Another down-side would be that there will be significant interference with other electrical devices and even common things like electronic lights, which is why the shielding covers the digital coaxial cable. Digital Coaxial cables are made up of either copper or silver wires. Both have about the same capabilities. The shield that surrounds the wire is aluminum foil (yes, same stuff you cook French-fries on, but a much higher quality aluminum foil). Digital coaxial cables have the ability to carry 5.1 channels stereo, as well as 7.1 channel stereo sounds. Digital Coaxial cables have two standards they require: 1. The RCA/BNC connecter at the end that meets Sony Philips Digital Interface Protocol (SPDIF). 2. The XLR based Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

Digital Coaxial cable can improve your sound quality when you’re trying to achieve the most out of your equipment. This is the ideal cable to hook up to your subwoofer cable to your receiver for awesome, clear sound when watching your favorite shoot-em-up movie and want to be right in the thick of it, or you’re bumping the newest hip-hop song and want to feel like you’re at the concert.

RCA:

This has become the workhorse of the audio world; it is used in almost every audio application still today. RCA connectors can do everything from audio, to video to pictures. This technology actually came about in the 1940s to connect phonographs to amplifiers. It was created originally to replace older style jack plugs. These plugs were created to transmit in Hi-Fi (high fidelity). RCA connectors are most commonly used with composite (red, yellow, white) and component cables (red, green, blue). They are a male connector with a metal jacket ring around the base of the tip which allows the plug to fit tightly over the female connecter. When using RCA connections for composite cables the yellow cable is video, the white and red are audio streams. When RCA cables are used for component cables, the blue, green and red are all used to transmit video. You can read our guide on component and composite cables here: Component 101 Guide. Some of the different devices used today that utilize RCA connections are: Receivers, video cameras (to connect to the TV), stereo receivers, video game consoles and other miscellaneous audio devices. Even though RCA cables are still used widely today, they are being phased out in favor of all digital cables (RCA is USUALLY analog signal only). RCA is a great choice if you have an older device, and you would like to re-use, but don’t know which cables to get. If your TV or audio device was made before 2004 your connection is more than likely an RCA connection.

3.5MM Audio Plug:

3.5mm audio plugs, or TRS connector is one of the most commonly used cables today. The TRS connecter was actually invented in the 19th century (for our young whipper-snappers, that’s a LONG time ago). TRS is an acronym for Tip, Ring, and Sleeve. This cables plug comes in many different shapes and sizes. I’m writing about the most commonly used of all the TRS connecters, the 3.5mm connecter. If you have an iPod, CD player, MP3 player, computer, TV, DVD player, aftermarket head-unit in your car, you get the idea; you have a 3.5mm audio jack. The 1/8” (3.5mm) plug was used originally created to be used as a two-conductor connection for transistor radio earpieces. 3.5mm cables are rated up to 34GHz of data transfer, for clear, non-distorted music.

Here at FireFold we carry a couple different types of 3.5mm connections:


Male to male: Standard 3.5mm connecter.





VGA to VGA with 3.5mm: This deals high performance solution for quickly connecting your PC to a video display system with speakers. Use this cable with projectors, flat-screen monitors, KVM switches with audio, speakers or a microphone. Designed to support resolutions up to 1600×1200. Plus this cable is shielded to extend your video and audio signals without distortion or loss.

3.5mm Male to Female Cable: Ideal cable to extend a male-male connection when the longest cable we sell isn’t long enough.










HDMI to DVI with 3.5mm:HDMI with 3.5mm to DVI-D with 3.5mm can be interchanged with a 3.5mm female to 2 RCA male. The Video resolution is Digital and the Audio sound is analog. With pure digital video and graphics signals on one compact, this makes for a high-performance connection! It’s fully shielded to provide complete immunity to environmental EMI and RFI, and it’s an ideal choice for high performance computer graphics, HDTV and presentation applications.

Adapters: We have adapters which can from single 3.5mm to dual female 3.5mm. 3.5mm to 2 RCA connections. 3.5mm to 1/4” plug. 3.5mm to Toslink. 3.5mm stereo male plug to 2 ¼” stereo female plugs adapter. 2.5mm stereo plug to 2 3.5mm stereo female plugs adapter. 3/5mm to mono RCA plug adapter. 3.5mm stereo plug to 2 RCA-Male cable. 3.5mm jack to 2.5mm plug.

I hope after reading through this article you can salvage some of your hair, and you have a better understanding of the many, many types of audio cables/connections that are available, and that you can better pick out what is best suited for your application. We at FireFold want to make your purchasing as painless as possible, and keep the consumer up to date with the ever-changing technologies, and it’s our middle name. Not to mention save you a few bucks in the process, so you can buy that sweet new TV you’ve been eyeing. We carry those as well, from small to BIG, at unbeatable prices, even anywhere else on the web. Happy buying!