Would switching from standard RCA cables (Red, White) to a Coaxial cable improve my sound quality?

Question

Currently, I'm running standard, non-gold-plated RCA cables from my middle-class Phillips HTS sound system to my TV.

A friend of mine said that if I switched from RCA to a Coaxial cable, it would make my system sound a lot better.

Is there any truth to that?

And, what do you suggest?

Answer 1

If you mean coax as in Digital audio, yes.

Plus if you have a digital TV and you use the tuner, the only way to pass multi-channel audio to your receiver is through the digital audio output.

Answer 2

Not much for TV, but for DVDs and if you use cable/satellite, you might see improvement.

Answer 3

Yes.

The Red, White cables carry analog stereo. This means 2 channels of sound.  Your Phillips HTS system 'fakes' this to feed 5 speakers, but you only have 2 channels to start with.

A coaxial-digtal cable can carry Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.  This is 6 separate channels that your Phillips system wont have to fake.

In truth - you wont notice much difference from your cable box as most television is stereo only.  But if you have HD channels - you will get things like Lost or Sara Connor Chronicals in 5.1 sound.  Very cool.

And your DVD's will have better surround sound because you will get the 5 separate sounds that the sound engineer designed.

The coaxial-digital cable is simply a video cable. These usually have yellow RCA plugs.  If you have one lying around - use it.  Or get a budget video cable from Radio Shack or the AR Pro cables from Best Buy.

Answer 4

Unless he was talking about a digital coax cable used for surround sound, he's wrong.  Even then, you'd still be using your TV's speakers, which aren't very good, and don't do surround sound (yes, I know some TVs can do "fakey surround sound" with 2 speakers, but it sounds no where near as good as if you were using 5 multiple speakers and a real subwoofer.)

The standard red & white RCA cables carry a stereo signal - which an old RFU coax connection does not support, so you would actually get worse sound by switching.

If you want better sound quality, you can connect the red & white cables to your stereo or surround system and use those speakers instead.  You'll only get stereo, but TV speakers aren't  the best in the world, so you should notice a big improvement - especially for movies.