Who makes the best 3.5 stereo mini-jack TO L&R PHONO (rca) cable?

kingaaa

I want to play music files on my laptop at my daughters communion via its "headphone out" jack. I will be plugging it into L&R rca inputs on a pa system. I have one of these cables but its ancient and I only paid a couple of quid for it years ago, but when I use it now I get the most apalling background noise. I'm looking for a superior quality cable that is built to last.Any ideas?

eoin5

It may not be the lead. I used to DJ with a Dell lappy and I had a similar problem, turned out to be an earthing issue between the laptop and the PA. Have you tried using an mp3 player?

To answer your question I found the bespeco leads to be good.

madtheory

Yes, it's an earthing issue. You can fix it by not connecting the laptop to the charger, run it on batteries. Or use an mp3 player, that's a good idea.

You can also get an isolator cable in a car audio shop, I forget the non technical name, it looks like a normal phono lead with a cylindrical black plastic thing in between the two ends. With that, you can use the charger without getting hum.

jiltloop

It may also just be the cable, I had a similar noise problem with the same kind of lead running from my pc to my monitors and as soon as I got a better lead the noise was gone. I picked up a decent lead in x-music for a tenner.

Dravokivich

jiltloop:

They did mention possible issue with the cable itself, but from my own experience I'd agree that the issue with noise is most likely the method of earthing the PSU on the Laptop itself. It's really common with the way most cheap Laptop PSU's are setup.

Obviously checking an alt RCA lead would be the first thing to run through as it'd be much cheaper.

kingaaa:

Would it not just be easier to organise a CD Player? Do you really need a Laptop just to play a few tunes?

madtheory

Ya, it's most likely caused by the PSU. If it's the lead, then it's still a grounding problem, the shield has disconnected at the jack end.