Cables are small and easily dismissed, but pay attention to the man behind the curtain— Audio Cables are what make your system sound so good, or bad. A cable is composed of two main parts: the conductor and connector. Good cables contain a third component: shielding. The conductor is the wire the signal passes through, the connector is what literally connects the cable to the piece of audio equipment used to produce sound and the shielding acts as a filter for the sound transmitted. The shielding sifts through the sound produced from two signals that pass through the conductor: electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI). Audio cables tend to have two shields, one per interference, as well as a conductor that is designed to decreases signal loss. There are two types of Digital Audio Cables, which are commonly used in CD and DVD players: coaxial and optical.
