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Re: Proposed something similar a while ago

Posted by Steve Eddy on August 19, 2005 at 09:37:15:

I suspect these plugs could upset the RCA apple-cart wholesale, as it is so easy, and so inexpensive to implement, and so damned prevalent, it doesnt take a genius to work out the economics involved.
Don't see much chance of that happening. The ubiquity of the RCA in and of itself just isn't going to let that happen in my opinion.

Of more importance, they offer a more stable impedance than RCAs, and that does affect the sound considerably IME, as the connection then more closely resembles a transmission line, instead of a junction (male and female RCAs have different impedance profiles, and cause junction reflections).
Hmmm. Not sure how you can look at something that has a typical length of something on the order of 0.00006 of a wavelength as a transmission line. I mean when something is that small compared to the smallest wavelength you're deaing with, how can you possibly get any sort of reflection?
And yeah, if you look at male and female RCAs individually they would appear to have slightly different characteristic impedances. But when mated, from an electrical standpoint, they effectively become a single unit with a single characterisic impedance.
But even if that weren't the case, why worry about that when the impedance of the load the cables are driving is typically on the order of 10k ohms to 100k ohms? That's an impedance mismatch on the order of 100:1 to 1,000:1.
If you're worried about reflections, then not only will your cable and connectors have to have the same characteristic impedance, but your source and load impedances would have to be the same as well. Which means that your source equipment would have to be able to drive loads on the order of 100 ohms or thereabouts.
You can pretty much forget about any sources with tube output stages. :)

In todays style and size conscious era, using a more compact, higher performing plug and socket that costs less, just plain makes sense. Hell the plugs and sockets cost so little, they could be offered with RCAs as well - with clear notes in the user guide that the RCA connection is sub-optimal, and included for historical compatibilty reasons only...
If you're talking about the larger consumer market, forget about it. They could give a shit about quality. They just want to amass as much shit as they can as cheaply as possible. Wal-Mart is successful for a reason you know. :)
As for the high end, I think they'll just continue with their trend of tarting up whatever's the standard in the mass market just as they did with RCAs.

The world of socketry is on the cusp of change - a new standard needs to be choosen. (and please god, dont ket it be mini-dins...!)
I think if there's going to be any change, it's going to be to eventually eliminated analogue audio altogether and go digital all the way to the speakers and your connector standards will more likely be USB or Firewire than mini-DINs.
se