I've just bought a y cable......?

Question

to play music from my laptop through my hi-fi. I know the two red/white jacks are supposed to go into the stereo and the single jack is supposed to plug into the laptop, however, my laptop has two sockets for headphones while my stereo has one socket saying audio input, not the two aux input sockets..... so, can i use the y cable the other way round?????

Answer 1

Y cables are omni-directional it doesn't matter which way you hook them up. All you need to consider is that the inputs and outputs are all mono, that is, hooked up with the correct type of connectors. I can't tell from your discription what type of connectors you have, but typical headphone outputs are stereo 'pin' connectors even if you have two of them. If your stereo input is meant for mp3 players (looks like a headphone jack on the player) it's likely that you only need a straight line stereo pin cable with two male connectors.