- All right.
So you got this rad new pair of powered speakers from Kanto,
and you look on the back and, Oh my God.
Why are there so many things what's going on?
You've discovered both the blessing
and the curse of powered speakers.
There do everything nature,
add some inherent complexity to them,
still not as complex as an AV receiver.
- [electronic voice] It's over 9000.
- But there's definitely a lot more going on
than say a portable Bluetooth speaker.
Well, good thing I'm here is
I'm going to tell you what each connection is,
what type of signal they receive or output,
which one you should use in different use cases,
and eventually answer the most important question of all.
What is the best input?
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So you got too many things going on,
inputs and outputs, and input receives
audio from an audio device
so that your speakers can do their thing,
and an output sends audio somewhere else.
And I'll delve into that a bit later.
All right.
So let's talk about some of the inputs on our YU4.
This over here is an RCA jack,
and this is an RCA cable with a male RCA plug
that fits into the jack.
RCA, generally carries two types of signals
line level, which is a signal that's pretty loud
and ready to roll and phono, which is pretty quiet
and needs to be amplified a bit.
Otherwise the speaker doesn't get very loud,
all modern audio devices, output line level.
The only exception is turntables,
which typically output that quiet phono signal.
If that's the case, you just need to flip this little switch
so that the phono signal incoming can be boosted internally
within the speaker to give you adequate volume.
Tuk, actually has a dedicated funnel input.
So no switch flippin is required.
If you're using a turntable that also has a ground wire,
you're going to want to connect it to the ground jack,
this is not an input or an output
as it doesn't transmit any audio.
It's just there to eliminate any potential buzzing
you might get. Don't think about it too much.
Just use it. If you're turntable has the ground posts,
otherwise you can safely ignore it.
Next is the AUX input, and the connector is
a 3.5 millimeter jack,
sometimes known as an eighth inch jack, or a headphone jack,
or mini stereo. It's got a lot of names.
This is the corresponding cable with its male 3.5 millimeter
plug that fits into the jack.
3.5 millimeter cables generally carry line level signals,
similar to RCA.
In fact, both RCA and AUX inputs are kindred spirits,
as they're both analog.
They're passing fluctuating voltage to the speaker.
The opposite of analog is digital,
which is passing data to the speaker.
And the speaker has got to figure out
how to turn it into audio.
I highly encourage you to check out our,
what is a dac video as a covers,
a bunch of info about the differences between these two
different types of signals.
You'll also get to see more of this beautiful face.
So let's talk about the digital inputs on our speakers
and we'll switch to TUK for them.
TUK has one optical input instead of two like YU4.
The connector is a toslink jack and
here's an optical cable with a male toslink plug.
It's called optical because it's using the light
to transmit data it's blinking on and off thousands
of times a second to pass the data
that the speaker needs to create audio.
optical cables, carry SPDIF signals,
which can be multi-channel for surround sound.
But in our case,
it's carrying a two channel or stereo signal.
You don't really have to worry about what SPDIF is.
You can just think of it as the language that the
audio device and the speakers use to
communicate and pass the data around.
To recap, since this one's a bit confusing,
this is an optical cable.
This is a toslink connector,
and it's carrying a stereo SPDIF signal.
TUk has USB, which YU4 does not.
The connector that TUK has is a type B USB jack,
and here's the male type b plug.
You usually see this on printers.
So these USB cables are often sold as printer cables.
USB carries data over its own proprietary signal
called USB audio class.
Again, USB audio class, is just the language
that the computer and the speakers communicate through.
And the last digital input is Bluetooth.
- [electronic voice] It's in the speaker.
- (whispers) Oh, in the speaker.
Bluetooth is wireless.
So there's no physical connectors or jacks or plugs.
And the receiver is actually inside of our speakers.
Bluetooth can carry data through a few different signals or
codex as they're called.
TUK supports AAC, APTX, and APTX HD.
With each of those progressively being able to transmit more
data, which correlates to higher audio fidelity.
That covers the inputs.
Let's talk about outputs.
So far we've been sending audio to the speakers.
Now we want to send the audio from the speakers,
to something else.
TUK has a subwoofer output on the rear, a single RCA, jack,
data subwoofer to TUK you'll want to run a single RCA
to RCA cable from the speakers sub out to a powered
speakers, RCA input.
Single RCA cables are usually sold as subwoofer cables.
And if you're buying a Kanto sub,
the correct cable will already be in the box.
Most powered subwoofers have stereo
RCA inputs, right, and left.
And since there's only one single RCA
output on the back of our speakers,
you'll want to plug the subwoofer cable
into the correct RCA jack,
avoid plugging the cable into any ports labeled LFE
just plug it into the red or white jack
that's labeled left, or right.
TUK also has a headphone output on the front.
And the connector is a 3.5 millimeter jack,
just plug in wired headphones.
I ain't got to explain sh...
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Now there's one more output that I want to talk about.
And that's these guys binding posts are strictly for
connecting speakers to AMPS.
They're not sending your
line level, phono, or digital signals.
They're sending the full fat wattage to the speakers.
It's what we call a high level signal.
High level signals are the last leg in the journey that
actually pushes power to the speaker to make it sing.
One thing to note that may be obvious to some of you,
but not others is that you can't
just plug a different solid cable.
Even if it fits into a jack, notice how you can plug AUX
into the RCA. Well, that's wrong just because you can plug
an N64 cartridge into a toaster doesn't mean you should.
Okay. So we covered a lot of ground
and hopefully you're ready for the big reveal,
which input is the best?
They're all pretty good. There's no right or wrong answer.
As they're all pretty capable of delivering
good clean sound.
The only downside of analog inputs like RCA and AUX
is that they have the ability to pick up noise
along the length of cable.
The cables kind of act like antennas.
Radio frequencies passing through the air,
can jostle the electrons inside of the cable.
And those little variations and electricity can be picked up
by the sensitive speaker.
Using nicer cables with thicker or better shielding can
reduce this effect,
but it's only really necessary to upgrade your cables.
If you can hear hissing or other distortion,
if it sounds good to you, don't worry about it too much.
Using the digital inputs of our speakers is generally
the preferred method.
Digital literally cannot pick up noise.
The signal is either perfectly represented
or it's completely garbled.
There's no in between for that reason,
you don't have to buy nice digital cables like you may have
to do with analog.
So feel free to cheap out on your USB and optical cables,
people, just more money you can put aside
for speaker stands.
Let's talk about the different audio devices,
you're likely to connect to our speakers
and I'll go over which input I think you should use.
And what circumstances may make you choose different input.
We'll start with turntables.
Literally every turntable on earth has RCA, So you use that.
Plug the turntables RCA output directly into your speakers,
dedicated phono input or into the RCA input
and flick the switch to phono.
Now TVs, literally every TV on earth has optical.
So use that, plug an optical cable into your TV's
toslink audio output and the speakers optical input.
Remember how I mentioned optical cables
can carry surround sound signals.
Make sure you set your TV, smart apps, or anything connected
to the TV, like video game console or cable boxes to stereo.
If you hear garbled, static,
you know something in the audio chain is still sending a
surround signal.
Computers and PCs, you're going to want to use
a digital connection here if possible.
USB, if your speakers have it or optical,
if you can swing it, sadly not many PCs have optical.
So it may be worth seeking out a USB to optical converter.
Why go to all this effort to use optical if pretty much
every computer has 3.5 millimeter outputs because the 3.5
millimeter jacks on most PCs are,
how do I put this?
Complete garbage.
They're usually an afterthought.
And the last thing you want to hear when your speaker is two
feet away from your ears is buzzing or hissing.
My advice if you're reluctant to go digital,
connect your computer to our speakers through
a 3.5 millimeter. And if it sounds good,
you're in the clear, if not go digital.
my young padawan.
Mobile devices phones, the whole point of phones
is that they're mobile.
So using a wired connection, doesn't make a lot of sense.
Use Bluetooth. You'll be happy you did.
If you rock an iOS device,
make sure the speakers you purchase support the AAC codec.
Most of our speakers do.
AAC is the highest quality codec that iPhones and iPads use.
Android phones can support APTX and higher end models do
APTX HD and there's no need to change any settings.
As the speakers will automatically choose the best quality
codec when the device connects to it,
Smart home.
If you want to connect a Google home to our speakers,
you got to use Bluetooth since they literally don't have any
wired outputs.
On the other hand, some of Amazon's echo devices
have wired outputs, and I would suggest using those
with our speakers rather than Bluetooth.
Not all of our speakers can automatically wake
from Bluetooth and the whole point of
using a smart home device with a speaker,
is so you can start casting audio to them
without having to manually turn them on.
Fortunately, all of our speakers can automatically
wake up when they're connected through wired inputs.
So you'll get a more seamless experience when wired.
Now there's a whole slew of other devices that can connect
to our speakers that I haven't mentioned.
If you're ever wanting an expert opinion
on how you should hook up an audio device
to a Kanto speaker,
never hesitate to contact our support team
or hit us up on social media.
If you enjoyed this video,
I'm sure you'll love the others on the channel
and make sure to subscribe and never miss another one.
I'm Jason from Kanto Audio.
And I'll see you in the next video.
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