The latest equipment has a range of unfamiliar socketry. Andrew Everard attempts to make sense of it all, and help you make the right connections

Once, it was so simple: the turntable connected to a dedicated input on the back of an amplifier, and everything else went into those ubiquitous red and white RCA phono sockets, one for each channel of each input.

These days, however, everything – from amplifiers to micro-systems to tuners and CD players – is sprouting all kinds of unfamiliar sockets of odd shapes and sizes, and offering ever more options for connecting product X to product Y. And while those familiar with the back end of AV receivers may be familiar with some of these new connections – multichannel analogue audio, optical and electrical digital and HDMI inputs, for example – the stereo amplifier sector is also seeing massive changes.

Available on some modern stereo amplifiers, and I suspect set to become more familiar in the near future, is a range of digital inputs, allowing external digital devices to be connected directly. Amplifiers increasingly have onboard digital-to-analogue conversion, to which devices such as computers, digital players and the like can be connected.

And CD players, of course: yes, they have their own conversion built in – and we haven’t seen a widespread revival of the old transport-only machines that accompanied the first blooming of standalone DACs a decade or more back – but if you have an older player with a digital output, a modern amp with onboard digital capability could be a worthwhile upgrade.

Many computers now have digital audio outputs, allowing their often fairly woeful built-in analogue stages to be bypassed: even on some laptops you’ll find a digital output concealed in the headphone socket, accessible using a mini Toslink optical cable.

However, if there isn’t a dedicated digital audio output, some devices now have USB Type B sockets designed to take the audio from computer to amplifier over a simple, inexpensive cable (although inevitably there are also pricey audio-only USB cables coming onto the market).

These sockets are found not only on amplifiers but also on some standalone DACs – and even on a few micro-systems and the odd CD player (such as the Audiolab 8200CD) and network player – and offer extremely simple connectivity with a computer. Once hooked up, the computer “sees” the device as it would a new soundcard, and simply plays music through it – no need for any drivers or software, in most cases.

Talking of networks, as you may have gathered from the products appearing in these pages over the past few months, an increasing range of devices can stream music from a computer or network attached storage (NAS) device, either using wired Ethernet or a Wi-Fi wireless link.

Apart from standalone systems such as the NaimUniti and UnitiQute, Arcam’s Solo Neo and the Marantz M-CR603, there are dedicated network media players designed to connect into an existing system: we’ve already tested the Marantz NA7004 and a Rotel offering, and more are on the way.

Finally, there’s the iPod, and things have moved on a way from the old 3.5mm stereo to two phono cables and basic iPod docks. The latest generation of products can offer control of the player direct from your remote handset, and some even take the audio from the portable players in digital form, again bypassing the none-too-special circuitry inside the handheld machines.

Some companies offer USB sockets into which the standard Apple white lead can be connected; others offer built-in iPod docks or clever multipin sockets to accept a range of modular adapters. These last connections can be used for iPods, but in some cases also for Bluetooth audio adapters and even Wi-Fi connections.

Also beginning to appear are products able to take advantage of Apple's AirPlay connectivity, enabling wireless streaming from the Apple devices to a hi-fi system. At the moment such products are few and far between, but there are all the signs that the idea will catch on fast.

As I suggested earlier, we’re now a very long way from one pair of sockets marked “phono” and a row of identical “line” pairs – but the good news is that today’s audio components offer more ways of listening to music than ever before.

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