# Resistance of RCA cables, what does it do?



## Wesayso (Jul 20, 2010)

I've seen some posts about monoprice RCA cables so I looked them up. 
For instance (looking for about 6 feet long cables) these:

For only $2.65 each when QTY 50+ purchased - 6ft Premium 2 RCA Plug/2 RCA Plug M/M 22AWG Cable - Black | 2-RCA Audio Cables

But reading the text made me wonder about the resistance of RCA cables:


Monoprice.com said:


> 6ft Premium 2 RCA Plug/2 RCA Plug M/M 22AWG Cable - Black
> 
> This is a premium quality two RCA (left/right) male to male stereo analog interconnect for your audio system.
> 
> ...


It clearly states the resistance of this set to be 75 ohm. Out of curiosity I measured the simple black and white give away's I had in a box in the garage.
I could not get a clear reading trying to keep the pins connected but it was about 1.6 ohm.

I had expected a video component cable to be 75 ohm and a RCA audio cable to be much less (like the probably unshielded RCA example in my garage).
After some browsing I found a German site with supposedly high end cables with an advertised resistance of 50 ohm.

What should I be looking for and has resistance (or the clear difference between 1.6 ohm and 75 ohm) a measurable effect on output?
I'm not looking for miracle cables, I just want some good ones that won't rob me of some output potential.

Can anyone enlighten me?


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## sonikaccord (Jun 15, 2008)

It's used for impedance matching antennas to receivers, or something like that. I'm going off the top of my head, but basically at our frequencies that we're interested in is negligible. It may have an effect on the equipment although. I believe most amps have high input impedance anyway and most hu's should have low output impedance. These are to the extremes like 200k so adding 75 ohms shouldn't make too much of a difference.


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## Wesayso (Jul 20, 2010)

So the resistance has little to no effect on output volume?

To answer my own question: yes.

After reading: http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum/how-articles-provided-our-members/7517-science-cables.html one more time, this time looking for different answers, I got what I was looking for:



MarkZ said:


> cotdt said:
> 
> 
> > why does it have to be several kilohms to be significant?
> ...


So my hunt for reasonable RCA cables will be limited by searching for good noise shielding.


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