Welcome to this tutorial on stereo and mono.

Almost all analogue leads carry a single mono signal. Therefore, to connect a device in stereo you must use 2 leads, 1 each for the left and right channels. To monitor the stereo effect, you must pan them left and right. There is 1 exception ... headphone leads carry a stereo unbalanced signal down a single cable that utilises a TRS (stereo) 1/4" jack plug or stereo mini jack.

Caption - Analogue stereo connections

Demonstration Keyboard connection to a mixer using its L/R line outputs and headphone socket.

Caption - Stereo and multi-channel digital audio leads

Because digital connections can encode multiple channels in a single signal, often only one lead is required to carry stereo or multi-channel signals. Examples include ...

• An AES3 XLR lead, carrying an 2 channel signal
• A SPDIF coaxial phono lead, carrying a stereo signal
• A Toslink optical lead, carrying a stereo SPDIF or 8 channels ADAT signal
• A BNC lead, carrying a 56 channel MADI signal
• A CAT6 ethernet lead, carrying up to 512 channels

Caption - Connecting devices with a SPDIF coaxial lead

Demonstration CD player SPDIF coaxial output to mixer SPDIF coaxial input.

Caption - Thanks for watching

The script for this video, with accompanying images, can be found at projectstudiohandbook.com 

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Thanks for watching.