RCA -> audio jack -> RCA conversion question

[bejamartins]

Hello guys. I'm trying to figure this out, I don't get why, so excuse my n00bieness.

 

So I got a 5.1 surround columns and I installed them on my room TV rig. The best solution to pass the rear speakers to the back wall was to buy a few white cable conduits and pass it through the ceiling, and, since the provided cables for those speakers were too short I had to get extensions.

 

I looked around and I found I shop nearby who sold very cheap audio jack extensions, so buying those was substantially cheaper then ordering RCA extensions.

 

At first I thought all I needed was one extension, since it has two channels (L&R), so I bought them and the converters but only one (the black/white) RCA part would work, so I had to pass two.

 

Why won't the red RCA work? Thanks in advance for any explanation.

[SupaKomputa]

Yes the extender will work, but normally people would use 1 long cable for the optimal signal.

[bejamartins]

57 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Yes the extender will work, but normally people would use 1 long cable for the optimal signal.

It did work. My question is why only the black / white channel works 

[rice guru]

1 hour ago, bejamartins said:

It did work. My question is why only the black / white channel works 

are their 3 cables on that rca connector?

[bejamartins]

1 hour ago, rice guru said:

are their 3 cables on that rca connector?

Only one per speaker, two speakers, hence my believe I could use the two channels in a audio jack cable. If I use two audio jack cables I can pass both speaker signals one per each if I pass them through the left audio channels.

[Derkoli]

2 hours ago, bejamartins said:

Only one per speaker, two speakers, hence my believe I could use the two channels in a audio jack cable. If I use two audio jack cables I can pass both speaker signals one per each if I pass them through the left audio channels.

An RCA cable only has two conductors. A speaker has the live terminal, then the negative/ground terminal, hence why an rca cable can only carry one channel. The centre pin of the RCA connector is positive, and the outer ring of metal is ground/negative. All RCA inputs/outputs of stereo components use two connectors, such as on my mcintosh MA9000. Remember RCA connectors need to be connected the same way for both channels of audio other wise they will be out of phase which will cause all sorts of fun/weird issues, sorry for blabbering on a bit