thumb|75-ohm coaxial cable with bnc-to-rca adapter  thumb|4-1pin s/pdif on a motherboard s/pdif (sony/philips digital interface format) is a type of digital audio interconnect cable used in consumer audio equipment to output audio over reasonably short distances. the signal is transmitted over either a coaxial cable with rca connectors or a fibre optic cable with toslink connectors. s/pdif interconnects components in home theatres and other digital high fidelity systems. s/pdif is based on the professional aes3 interconnect standard. s/pdif can carry two channels of uncompressed pcm audio or compressed 5.1/7.1 surround sound (such as dts audio codec); it cannot support lossless formats (such as dolby truehd and dts-hd master audio) which require greater bandwidth like that available with hdmi or displayport. s/pdif is a data link layer protocol and a set of physical layer specifications for carrying digital audio signals between devices and components over either optical or electrical cable. the name stands for sony/philips digital interconnect format (more commonly known as sony philips digital interface), sony and philips being the primary designers of s/pdif. s/pdif is standardised in iec 60958 as iec 60958 type ii (iec 958 before 1998).  ==applications== a common use for the s/pdif interface is to carry compressed digital audio as defined by the standard iec 61937. this mode is used to connect the output of a dvd player or computer, via optical or coax, to a home-theatre amplifying receiver that supports dolby digital or dts surround sound. another common use is to carry two channels of uncompressed digital audio from a cd player to an amplifying receiver. ==hardware specif
Audio_engineering Computer_hardware_standards Digital_audio IEC_60958