Is an RCA S/PDIF cable just a regular RCA cable?

[whistleclient]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, I just had to pick one up today and I wanted to be sure.

 

[MrWhiteUK]

short answer, yep.

I just brought one too for my Santa Cruz.

Just got a good quality 2rca-->2rca interconnect, put a 2rca-->1 3.5mm stereo plug converter on the end that goes into the sound card. With the SC u then have 1 rca (red) for DD/dts and the other (white) for PCM. I only have 1 free coax input on the back of my receiver so I presume as only one stream will be used at the same time (to save the hassle of swapping plugs over) I might get a 2rca-->1rca converter.


Hope that helps.

 

[RC7]

Most stores sell special coaxial digital audio cables to be used with spdif outputs on audio equipment. Im not sure if a regular RCA cable would work or not. To be sure you could just go for the digital cable.

 

[Noriaki]

Usually yes.
But not always.

 

[MrWhiteUK]

I've just tested it with my DVD-->Receiver it works fine, it's exactly the same thing as a 'Digital' coax cable. Coax is coax.

 

[Yoshitoshi]

I used to be into hi-fi stuff a while back, and for CD players, a digital co-ax (i.e. RCA phono connector) cable had to have a resistance of 75 ohms.

Sonic Link used to be the daddy of cable makers.. you can find them here.

Yoshi.

 

[MrWhiteUK]

The cable that came in the box for my sound card was a cheap nasty, 3.5mm to 2 phonos, u know the type thin black cable red/white plugs.

Is my idea of converting the 2 phonos (DD/dts & PCM) into 1 ok. What will happen (don't know if possible?) a digital stream came from both?

Thanks

 

[Yoshitoshi]

<< Is my idea of converting the 2 phonos (DD/dts &amp; PCM) into 1 ok. What will happen (don't know if possible?) a digital stream came from both? >>



I have no idea, but you would effectively be connecting two outputs together as well, if they have different parities (i.e. the 'baseline' signal for no data, either a 1 or a 0 in digital terms) then you could have problems. If the parites were the same but both were transmitting data simultaneously then either the soundcard would not be able to process it, or the combined data stream would generate an inaudible frequency that could possible damage your speakers.

I'd just buy the right cables with nice gold plated connections and change them over when I needed to. Get something like the Front-X to give your case front connections - like the Soundblaster LiveDrive.

Yoshi..

 

[StrangeRanger]

There is a difference between digi co-ax and regular rca cables. like it was mentioned digi co-ax cables, depending on application, have a constant measured resistance. the most common being 75ohm. but for going just from your sound card > receiver, if it sounds ok to you it's probably gonna work just fine. but if you are doing something like a DAT or MD deck to your pc, you will for sure want the correct digi co-ax line.
j

 

[AppleTalking]

I've got a Santa Cruz sound card hooked up to my digital Boston Acoustics BA790 speakers using a regular old RCA cable that I pulled out of my PlayStation and it works fine. Of course, my BA790s came with a digital coax cable, but I've been too lazy to try and find it.

Nick

 

[hifimaster]

Plug the 3.5mm into digital out and plug the left rca jack (usually white or black) into the coax input on the receiver.Power DVD is the only progam I have found that lets you use DD/DTS.The receiver should change automatically from Dolby Digital (6 ch) to pcm (2 ch) depnding on what your doing (ie Winamp,powerDVD).