Rca aux cable: Replacement RCA to 3.5 mm Stereo AUX Audio Cable

DETAILS

650

AUX – male Type: connector, Manufacturer: Trioma

DETAILS

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Soundbar 9 Connection and Setup Guide0001

Digital Optical Audio (also known as Toslink)

HDMI (connect all devices to the soundbar)

HDMI ARC (connect all devices to the TV)

Bluetooth

AUX (aka Auxiliary or 3.5mm)

RCA

Using the soundbar with a receiver

Output

The soundbar can be a great tool for solving many different problems in your home theater. They look beautiful while enhancing the aesthetics of your space, they cut down on the amount of cables you need to run, saving you time and effort during installation, and depending on the model, you get all of these benefits as well as incredible sound quality. However, the way you connect the soundbar to the TV itself can affect the sound quality.

You have several options for connecting your soundbar to your TV, including:

• Digital Optical Audio (also known as Toslink)
• HDMI
• HDMI ARC
• Bluetooth
• AUX (aka auxiliary or 3.5mm)
• RCA

But these methods are not the same. They have different pros and cons that you can use for different purposes. If you’re using your home theater to watch movies at the highest sound available, it might push you to do something different than if you were just watching a “normal” TV. To get the most out of your soundbar, be sure to check out the options below and choose what works best for you.

Digital optical audio (also known as Toslink)

The most common audio connection method for today’s soundbars is via a digital optical audio cable. They are sometimes referred to as Toslink or SPDIF cables. They have a square connection with a small circle in the middle, and are a bit stiffer than other cables because they have a fiber optic cable (read: glass) inside.

This is one of the easiest ways to connect a soundbar to a TV because it is one thin cable that goes from one device to another. There’s nothing to fiddle with here, and this thin cable actually makes cable management incredibly easy.

To connect the soundbar to your TV using a digital optical cable, simply locate the ports on both devices and then make sure the soundbar is positioned where it should be in relation to the TV. Check both connections: digital optical cables are designed to enter with a hard “click”, so make sure you hear and feel the connectors click into place when you install the cable.

You are then ready to use the optical cable to connect devices and manage the cable. Since the cable is very light, it is very easy to cool the excess cable in a loose bundle and use a piece of tape to stick it to the back of the TV.

But don’t twist the cable too tight and don’t try to make sharp corners out of it: this glass fiber can break if you bend the cable too far. This is one of the disadvantages of this method: the cable is quite fragile compared to other standards. But replacements, like the KabelDirekt optical digital audio cable (on Amazon), are fairly reasonably priced.

Once you’re connected and both devices are on, try playing something. If the connection doesn’t “just work”, you may need to set up your TV and make sure it’s outputting audio to the digital optical connection. This may require you to find the TV’s internal speakers in the sound settings and set them to ‘OFF’, and if there are multiple output options you can choose from, look for ‘optical’ or ‘digital optical’ and then select it.

HDMI (connect all devices to the soundbar)

First, let’s discuss the difference between HDMI and HDMI ARC. We have a more detailed article on HDMI ARC, but it’s quick and dirty: HDMI ARC is a way to reduce the amount of cables and remotes you need by allowing the TV and soundbar to communicate with each other via a dedicated audio input. Return channel (ARC).

This means you can connect all your video/audio sources to the TV directly instead of the soundbar and then only connect one cable from the TV to the soundbar. Once the TV and soundbar are connected via HDMI.

But there are certainly cases where you don’t want to use an HDMI ARC connection, or you might just have a TV or soundbar that doesn’t have an HDMI ARC port. It’s not a big deal: it just means you need to connect all your HDMI sources to the soundbar, using the soundbar as a receiver, which can then stream the video “upstream” to the TV.

To connect your devices without using ARC, first connect all video sources to the soundbar, then use the soundbar’s HDMI output port to connect to your TV. This ensures that the highest quality audio is delivered to the soundbar, because if you connect the system the other way, through a TV and then to the soundbar, the TV can process the audio signal.

Even if you do have HDMI ARC ports on both your TV and soundbar, you can plug devices up in a way to get the best sound quality. HDMI ARC is limited to 5.1 channel audio and cannot handle advanced audio standards such as Dolby Atmos or DTS:X.

ARC to get the best quality. (And be sure to check out our Shockwafe Ultra review if you’re interested in learning more about this device.)0003

HDMI ARC (connect all devices to the TV)

supports advanced audio standards such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. A new standard is on the horizon: HDMI eARC, which will support these 7.1+ channel settings and advanced formats (more on that here).

However, for the purposes of this discussion, HDMI Arc and HDMI eARC are interchangeable. If you do have more advanced hardware that has the EARC standard built in, connecting your SoundBar to your TV follows the same process as HDMI ARC.

First, locate the HDMI ARC port on your TV and soundbar. They look the same as HDMI ports, but they will be labeled “ARC” so you know which one to use. Then, using an HDMI cable made around the year before (supporting at least HDMI 1. 4), simply connect the two devices.

The trickier part is that all of your video sources need to be connected to TVs and other HDMI input ports, so you’ll need to hook them up further and manage cables however you see fit.

You can then turn everything on and check the connections. Although HDMI should be set to automatic, you may need to enable HDMI ARC in your TV settings. Go to the sound settings menu and find the control called “HDMI Arc” or “HDMI Control” and then make sure it’s enabled.

Bluetooth

Another option in the menu is to connect the soundbar to your TV using a Bluetooth connection. It is certainly easier than the other options discussed in terms of cable management. Wireless is hard to beat.

However, what makes Bluetooth attractive in terms of cable management also introduces some audio quality issues that you may not want to put up with. Even the most advanced Bluetooth standards don’t support the bit rates available with cable options, which means the maximum number of channels you can hope to support is a whopping two.

That’s right, if you use Bluetooth, you can get left and right channel and subwoofer. Your soundbar probably supports at least 2 channels of audio. This isn’t automatically an issue, but if it’s even a slightly advanced center channel device like the Samsung HW-R60C 3.1 Channel Soundbar (on Amazon), then the Bluetooth connection can limit performance.

And here’s another worry: This wireless signal is likely competing for spectrum space in your home with phones, a wireless router, and any number of smart home devices. The signal can easily be broken. This may cause intermittent audio dropouts or quality degradation (crackling or fuzziness) that you cannot control.

But Bluetooth can be a good budget option, a stepping stone to getting your setup functional while you plan your next upgrade. It’s a handy tool to have in your toolbox, even though it’s really only there to solve specific problems, not to solve every setting.

AUX (aka Auxiliary or 3.

5mm)

Auxiliary connections, also known as “AUX” or “3.5mm”, use 3.5mm to 3.5mm cables that you , probably more used to seeing at the end of headphones. While accessory cables offer the “one cable” simplicity of accessory and HDMI ARC, they have all the limitations of Bluetooth.

Namely, you will be limited to two channels, so there are no advanced multi-channel settings or subwoofers. Moreover, AUX is a physical, not a digital format. All other methods discussed in this article are digital (with one asterisk that RCA can technically be physical or digital depending on cables and settings).

This means that the auxiliary cable can transmit the physical audio signals of the left and right channels only over copper wires. There are no return channels like on HDMI ARC. No multiple channels at all, as you don’t get it with HDMI and optical. And no two-way communication, which Bluetooth technically supports.

This can be a problem because the actual audio information transmitted is of the lowest quality, and any additional information that can be digitally combined is compressed so that only a simple physical signal is transmitted.

But sound quality may not be your goal here. Like Bluetooth, the accessory is a fantastic way to quickly get up and running while you plan your next move. It’s also a good option for mobile devices that don’t support Bluetooth, or when you want to connect directly to a mobile device to bypass any wireless signal issues.

Again, the accessory is a good tool to have in your toolbox, but it’s not the ultimate TV connection solution. For something multi-channel or when quality matters, you’ll want to use one of the digital options above.

RCA

RCA stands for Radio Corporation of America. This is an old standard dating back to at least the 1940s when RCA (a company) standardized it as a way to connect to audio devices like phonographs and radios.

If you want something higher quality, this is not the type of connection you want to use. RCA cables themselves may support a 2.1 channel setup, but the format is obsolete and is now becoming obscure.

It would be amazing if your TV and soundbar supported RCA, and even if they support channel clipping, you’ll probably want to use something like optical or HDMI to get better signals from your TV to the soundbar.

But there are other cases where RCA might make sense, such as if you have an old TV and don’t want to upgrade right now. You can also get an RCA to Aux adapter like this Amazon Basics (on Amazon) which will let you use the RCA ports on the soundbar to connect mobile devices that don’t support Bluetooth or that you just don’t need. use wirelessly.

Then RCA is an option, but it will probably be your last resort. Higher end soundbars may only have connections to do an RCA connection because they have an “everything and the kitchen sink” mentality, and some midrange models have these connections because they know you can use an older TV, but many Premium soundbar options are no bother at all, including RCA jacks.

Using the soundbar with the receiver

So now that you understand the various methods you can use to connect the soundbar directly to your audio source, there is another option you might be interested in (in addition to setting up the microphone with it, for which we have a guide). If you currently have an amplifier or receiver, you may be wondering if you should connect your soundbar to your TV using this equipment.

Even if you don’t already have the equipment on hand, you might be wondering if adding an amplifier or receiver will improve the sound quality. We have another article that goes into more detail on this, but in short, you probably don’t want to use an amplifier or receiver with your soundbar.

First, the setup with a receiver and soundbar introduces additional complexity as you have to manage additional equipment and cables that won’t cost you anything. If your soundbar doesn’t have the ports available to support the level of sound quality you want, then adding a receiver won’t get you there, because soundbars aren’t designed to work with receivers.

Instead, most soundbars act as receivers themselves, replacing this hardware. Some models even take this to the extreme, such as the Nakamichi Shockwafe Ultra (on Amazon), which offers multi-channel speakers to which sound is routed from the soundbar.