The Ultimate List of Audio Video Cables
The simplest way to listen to a song is probably to blast it on your phone or share it via Bluetooth to a speaker. And as for watching a video, a tv show, or a movie, you might as well find the biggest screen around you.
But these are options for when you want the easiest, fastest solution and it might not give you the best quality of audio or video to immerse yourself in.
The perfect audio and video setup requires a combination of the right equipment, from ports, and cables to power cables and display devices. The key is not that your equipment is the latest and the greatest but that all parts of your setup are compatible with each other.
Let’s go through some common audio video cables:
Radio Corporation of America came up with this cable, consisting of two audio cables (left and right stereo pair), and one video cable. The stereo pair is colored white and red for the Left channel and Right channel respectively.
RCA cables pass analog signals and are generally found on older televisions. However, even if the television is new, there are chances that it might not have more than 2 HDMI ports. In such a case, you can use these ports to connect peripherals that support RCA.
High Definition Multimedia Interface has been around since 2002. HDMI passes a digital signal and carries both audio and video signals in a single cable. Since 2002, there have been many updates in the standard and the latest cable can now support the likes of 4K displays.
S Video cables are another older standard cable that, as the name suggests, only carry video signals. The way that they can work is that it carries the video data in two signals: color and brightness. S Video cables can be used in place of an HDMI cable along with a separate audio cable. It carries analog signals.
VGA cables are more commonly found in a computer display setup. It was launched by IBM in 1987 and then built on by many others. VGA stands for Video Graphics Array and has been a crucial cable for the desktop computer era. With the upgrade in display technology, VGA was phased out in place of HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.
XLR cables are the holy grail of audio cables. If you need to use an amplifier, sound mixers, or microphones, XLR cables make for the best, most stable way to get those signals. The most common one is the one with three pins: positive, negative, and grounding. Audiophiles who work on audio editing swear by it and never leave it out of their kits.
Digital Visual Interface cables are great because they can carry both analog and digital signals. These make them compatible with more than a few devices and they can be used for various LCD displays as well as projectors.
If there ever was an audio-video cable that upgraded and blew up, it would be the DisplayPort cable. It is available over USB C. DisplayPort over USB 4 is set to support 8K and 16K displays in the near future.
Wrapping up
Throughout time, technology has been evolving, sometimes steadily, sometimes in a rush, sometimes by the demand of the industry, and sometimes in protest of the industry.
But with that evolution, older cables become even more valuable in their rarity. Never throw out a working cable, lest you may need it years from now to play that one video stuck on a VHS tape!
You will find all of your cable needs fulfilled at SF Cable!
