RCA cables are the little red and white or red and yellow plugs used in many
video and
audio appliances. The are very easy to make. Simply buy a pack of the connectors from
RadioShack (this is very cheap) and get an old pair of
headphones that you dont want, because the band is broken or one of the cushions is missing or whatever. Rip the cables out of the headphones, and
strip the wires. You will find one set of
copper wires coming out of the mane
tubing, and another tubing inside, with more
copper wires coming out of it.
Soulder the copper wires from the inner tube to the inner connecter on the
RCA plug (make sure you slide the casing of the
RCA plug onto the
wire first, or you wont be able to screw it back on). Then
soulder the copper wires from the outer tube to the outer connector. If you want to keep the other end of the cable as a
1/4 inch or
1/8 inch jack connector (whatever was originally there on the headphones), then you are done. This will work to connect sound appliances of either nature (jack or RCA) to each other in either direction. If you want a
RCA to
RCA cable, simply cut the wires to the desired length and repeat the above instructions on the other end.
You can also, if you want, make the wires from scratch. InNstead of using the tube in tube method, get four seperate wires containing thin copper wires at the required length. Then soulder a connector at each end of each pair of wires. At this point, you can tape or glue the wire-pairs together to make them more compact and less messy, but keeping the wires seperate, preferably at a distance of 6 inches, will increase sound quality and reduce interference. Also, contrary to popular belief, sound and video cables that use RCA connectors are the same, so don't pay more for video cables (as they often are priced higher), because sound cables will do the job. The only exception is a stereo-sound / video cable grouping, which contains 3 connectors.