Who's feeling me tonight?

Hey, what's the difference between stereo and mono cables? I looked it up but I didn't really understand.

Mono cables carry single channel signals, while stereo cables have an extra connection. This allows the stereo cable to carry two channels of audio. Stereo allows two different sets of audio to come out of the left and right ear buds, forming one single audio image. If you put your left headphone in, you can hear possibly the bass. When you put your right one in, you hear everything else. That's just a bad example. Mono doesn't have two different audio channels, so both sides come out the same.

This post was edited by RMMhc on Oct 21 2013 06:06pm

Okay, so I have a stereo cable but when my dac has a left and right for outputs and it only gives one of my speakers sound when I plug it in. Does that mean I need to buy two new mono cables?

Is this for a surround sound setup?

No, stereo.

What dac do you have?

schiit modi.

It's RCA out.

The white one carries the left channel, The red one carries the Right channel.


What speakers are you using?

M-audio bx5a. It came with a pair of xlr cables but the other end is a single 3.5mm input(is that rca?)