Quick and simple: do you call those silly little plugs and sockets used on unbalanced domestic gear (and for amateur video too) a phono plug/socket or RCA plug/socket?

This is inspired by a post in another topic saying that RCA is the name for the plug used for a phono connection; I've always thought of RCA as the American name for what we in the UK call phono. I suspect the truth is that the terms are interchangeable with no true standard.

However, opinions please.

Bob

What I call them tends to be unrepeatable! I've always used the term "Phono" for them, but understood "RCA" to mean the same thing. I think it is a trans-atlantic thing, certainly the Canadian I worked with a bit ago didn't understand what I meant by phono.

I was under the impression that Phono was related to the fact that they are used for connecting turntables to mixer channels/preamps. That said, I use Phono and RCA interchangeably - whichever comes into my head first!

which made me chuckle. I've grown to call them RCA, unless I'm working with someone who's only ever set up a hi-fi before

Likewise, RCA is the norm for me, but there's always someone who looks at you with a blank face when you say "can you pass the RCA cable".

Yep, RCA here too unless I get a blank/confused look back...

S

Several comments thus far but only one vote - mine!!
:S
I've called them Phono for more years than I can recall, but only recently have more people I know started to refer to RCA as an alternative...

I normally call them phono, but do use RCA on occasion. Radio Corporation of America, I believe?

I have always called them phono, and always linked RCA to particular inputs with RIAA equalisation and higher gain, designed for turntable inputs only.

However, Wikipedia claims that:


I guess that you use whatever you, and people around you, are most comfortable with and understand.

I went for "something else"

In english to me its a PHONO always.

In spanish to me its an RCA (said Ere Ze Ah).

When working I read, RCA and when talking to others I say RCA, but self-notes and inside my head its a phono.
But really for the case of this study, its a phono!

Its phono for me or "d.j.s" (as this is a public forum won't translate) but just as an aside on this topic, I got caught short on fridays gig and found I was short of one cable due to one failing.Where at 830 on a friday evening can you get hold of one? .... the answer was tesco's! Is this wrong?

PS

They called them phono's

Agh!

I call them both,

But which ever one I call them the client never knows which one im talking about.. so now I say RCA-Phono on the phone.

So ive made up a new word to make my life easier!

Phono for me, I always presumed RCA was a brand that sort of invented them, therefore not the generic term, although Im beginning to think Im wrong.

I very rarely have to have a converation about them, as most of my customers just say, we want X, and how I do it is up to me.

I was having this conversation only the other day with somebody at a show. Personally I'm pretty ambivalent and will usually refer to them as 'phonos' if I'm dealing with DJs or Joe Public, but in my head they always seem to spring to mind as being 'RCA phonos'.

I've also heard them referred to as 'pin jacks' as opposed to 'phone jacks' (took me a while to grasp what the heck was being discussed there!) and that lovely Americanism, 'cinch'.

Either way we ought to all be grateful that we work in an industry with such a rich lexicon. Or if you prefer, TC. Or SPX. Or Briscati...

I usually use phono as a habit more than anything else as it seems more natural to say than RCA.

Josh

Phono always for me. RCA is like saying 'cannon' when you mean XLR or Hoover when you mean Vacuum Cleaner. I'm english and this is an org.uk forum so I'll stick to phono!

You have to be careful saying "phone" jack (as opposed to "phono") because that's another name for the "B" Gauge quarter inch jack as often used on jackfields...since the B gauge was used by phone companies for switchboards.

Bob

Absolutely. The chap in question was a particularly over-excitable German called Thomas. It was only his constant reference to 'phone jack inputs' on a desk that eventually made me realise that he was talking about phono connections when he talked about 'pin jacks'.

Depends on who I am talking to, DJ's and randoms it makes life easier to call them phono's, anyone who should know better or is learning I call the RCA's as I was always led to believe that this was the correct terminology. I asked the question years back to somebody who told me that the official name is RCA due to the company who invented them naming and patenting them as such. On the other hand though, I'm still a feet and inches man so I guess I'm not always PC.

Phono - I'm too bl**dy old to change now

Pete

I use both terms, and by the looks of most comments most blue roomers do too!

I think it depends on who you are talking to, I helped out a soul band the other day and the soundie asked me what an RCA-RCA cable was.
He had only known them as a phono.

John Denim.

erm, by the look of the poll results, nearly 85% know them as phonos...

sad to say I'm one of those 84pointwhatever % who has spent most of their professional life without an exciting alternative name for these little blighters.