Av cable surround sound is this true surround sound or should i get an optical cable for ps3?

Question

is there a diffirence or not

Answer 1

People aren't really being specific, so I'll add my two cents.



There are two types of audio signal. Digital and analog.

There are several sub-types of each. I'll deal with a few of the most common.



HDMI - Can pass up to 7.1 true surroundsound in digital compressed or uncompressed. Best Quality. Also passes HD video, and several other neat features. Different revisions mean that not all equiptment can support HDMI to its full potential. Check the HDMI version of your equiptment.



Toslink (S/PDIF) - Digital, optical. Uses special fibre optic cabling to pass the digital S/PDIF protocol signal. Can pass up to (5.1 AFIK) true surroundsound in digital. Best quality, but fewer channels than HDMI, and no video.



COAX (S/PDIF) - This is a single RCA-style connector, usually colored orange or sometimes black, and marked "digital audio", "S/PDIF", or a few other uncommon names. This passes the same signal as Toslink optical, only this does it on an electrical pathway. Effectively no different from optical.

Analog (Composite) - This is a set of two or  three (with video) RCA-style connectors. Not surroundsound. Passes an analog (usually stereo - red and white plugs, or less common - mono - white only) signal, so audio quality will usually be less than digital signals. Usually accompanied by the yellow composite video plug. Video quality very low compared to digitall. Quality is especially a problem with long cables, lots of splicers and connectors, or in EMI (interference) rich areas.



Analog (Component) - Five RCA connectors. Not surround sound. The same red and white plugs supply 2.0 stereo audio. Here the video is seperated into it's components (hence the name) with a red, green, and blue plug as well. Depending on your equiptment, this can potentially supply HD video. Same downsides as the above Analog (composite) but with much better video.



Analog Multichannel - Usually several RCA or 3.5mm plugs. This is the same analog audio signal as composite, except here they have added several more lines for the extra channels. Since an extra line is used for each channel, this can have as many channels as the device was designed to support. Audio quality issues are same as analog (composite), and usually no video is supplied. Video may be supplied through any number of digital methods seperately or with coax (Cable TV),  component or composite analog signals.



Long story short - if you're using the red and white RCA cables for your audio, you don't have true surround sound, even if your reciever is playing it on all your speakers. (unelss you've got analog multichannel which is quite rare, and includes some of green, blue, grey, tan, and purple plugs, depending on how many channels are supplied).



More info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_connector

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S/PDIF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI