Even the Hi-Fi Gods will use a toslink cable to review a piece of equipment...go figure! To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Le câble optique, autrement appelé Toslink (pour Toshiba Link) est un câble avec un connecteur de norme S/PDIF (standard qui a été inventé conjointement par Sony et Philips. one doubt still remains. And that is where the jitter-induced spuriae affect the sound.

Sorry to push the issue, but it seems as if the truth came out in the end !!!

Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. Higher bandwidth means theoretically superior sound quality, but most won't notice a difference. I use optical from my airport express (arguably mid-fi) to my Nova and Headroom Ultra. Aux vs. Bluetooth: What's the Difference. I dont know what the answer is, all the hifi talk just doesnt match up to the long established priciples of data transmission and its mediums. TOSLINK cables are usually limited to 5 meters in length, with a technical maximum of 10 meters, for reliable transmission without the use of a signal booster or a repeater. There was an improvement, though, when using the single-mode glass inter-connect. how do you identify a bad cable vs a bad port? Digital optical digital cable comes with a connector with a tiny lens and comes with a cover to protect the lens from scratches when not in use. Optical cables tend to be more fragile than their coax counterparts; optical cables can't be pinched or bent tightly, for example. What type of coax would you recommend? TOSLINK cables are usually limited to 5 meters in length, with a technical maximum[1] of 10 meters, for reliable transmission without the use of a signal booster or a repeater.

BTW, I'm not sure how much difference a high end toslink cable will make - there's quite a bit jitter via toslink, from what I understand. Toslink's more limited bandwidth shifts the transition timings, which define the difference between "1"s and "0"s on an AES3 or S/PDIF datastream.

HDMI vs. optical: Which digital-audio connection to use? While these cables support 5.1 multi-channel audio and Dolby Digital, they do not support high-definition audio (DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD). For this reason I have often been told that you should always connect the RCA connectors first, before connecting the entire system to the mains voltage - or use the ground lug that some of these devices have to reference the system to mains earth at all times. Fiber optic does not radiate electromagnetically, but more important is that is immune to electromagnetic interference that can cause data corruption on copper in extreme conditions. Electrical interference is not an issue with digital optical cables. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register. The cable system out there is fiber, it is only changed to cable at the pole to the house. Audio signals must be converted from an electrical signal to an optical one before traveling through the cable. Your device supports Toslink or optical connections if you find the distinct “optical audio”, “digital audio out” or “Toslink port.”. What grade of fibre is used in optical fibre displays? I look forward to your findings and seeing how they compare to mine. Toslink cables support several types of media formats. This is shown in the Hawksford & Dunn article to which I referred you earlier. Coaxial cables are known to lose signal strength over long distances, which is not a concern for the average home user. I think the theoretical ideal would to be using error-correction transfer into a buffer and clock it out on the DAC side. From what your saying the AES standard is actually for synchronous transmission using an embedded clock and not as i understood it to be which is Asynchronous using just a known local clock to demultiplex the digital information. To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers. I've tried both, I don't find much difference, if any. Finally, coaxial cables do not have enough bandwidth to support high-end surround lossless formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. RCA cable with plastic pin - what's its purpose? Your choice of cables will help achieve this purpose. USB's signal should be: Soundcard-> PC's mainboard-> USB chip-> USB cable ->DAC's USB receiver. SPDIF vs. Optical – What Is SPDIF and What Is Optical? If any existing humming or buzzing is present within a system, a coaxial cable may transfer that noise between components. Glass refracts light better than plastic and single-mode glass refracts light in a different manner than multi-mode. The decision about which cable to use should be based on what is available to you. Toslink cables send pulsating flashes of LED light to transmit data between two devices. I can't discern a difference. Would the patch cable you refer to include lenses on the ends? Cannot carry many high-quality lossless audio formats. Coaxial cables look and operate much like traditional RCA jacks, which are favored for their ruggedness and durability. Im not sure if you realise but technology exists for every phone call in the world to be simulateneously transmitted down a single fibre. So what is jitter? Swapping it for a plastic optical cable fixed the problem. Also poor are the transmitters and receivers on TosLink connected equipment - they are typically pretty basic as I understand it. Id like to dispute this claim that optical produces the most jitter.

(as an analog to what a TosLink cable has). Classic story about a rainmaking pilot over LA. Also SPDIF includes error-checking, so the receiver will mask any errors. With RCA, the two networks connected have to be referenced to each other. With more modern chips which use a digital PLL to reconstruct the clock, good luck hearing any difference! It is not to be confused with, Clear TOSLINK cable with a round connector for, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Product guide, Fiber-Optic Devices TOSLINK(tm)", "Chromecast Audio adds support for multiroom music and high-res files", Audio and video interfaces and connectors, Toshiba Telecommunication Systems Division, Sony Toshiba IBM Center of Competence for the Cell Processor, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=TOSLINK&oldid=973307761, Articles needing additional references from January 2011, All articles needing additional references, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Digital audio bitstream. What can I say?

One major take-out for me has been the extent to which a desire to be backwards-compatible with the then-massive installed base of analogue studio equipment (inadvertantly) hamstrung the digital interface standards from the get-go and the degree to which the subsequent explosion in the installed base of digital equipment (both professional and consumer) has militated against efforts to do anything about it. What I still dont get is how Coax can be better at transmitting a digital signal than fibre, I understand the principles of what your saying but from my telecomms network education the superiority of fibre as a transmission medium is immense, there is nothing short of a pure vacumn that is currently better. Coax has no trouble with bandwidth, it'll pass 384k with no trouble, whether it will sound better is left as an exercise for the marketing department. Think of jitter as a miss-timing of the digital data. By the way, if TOSLINK optical is so great why haven't the computer companies jumped on the bandwagon? Wait a second, perhaps I already did?? The TOSLINK optical really only makes sense on portable equipment where space is a concern.

Many experts say the difference in audio quality and performance is negligible. If you'll allow me to pull out some of the, ahem, pithy bits from all of this, I would say (in reference various comments throughout this thread): Purely out of idle curiosity I have added a mini cable survey to my to-do list.

Due to their high attenuation of light, the effective range of plastic optical cables is limited to 5–10 m.[1] They can temporarily fail or be permanently damaged if tightly bent. I can accept that a quality glass fiber connected to a well enginered output of a transport coupled to another properly designed input of a DAC with excellent jitter rejection could do a great job. This doesn't matter for a 1m long fiber in your home cinema, but if you need a 100 meter run, coax will be the only option. For example, see this link. If you want to know which one you got, make a test. Optical TOSLINK vs. USB: Which connection is better to connect a DAC? I think for mixer consoles it was preferred for low latency. Barring a major issue, all the bits will be there with both systems (I checked). Several types of fiber can be used for TOSLINK: inexpensive 1 mm plastic optical fiber, higher-quality multistrand plastic optical fibers, or quartz glass optical fibers, depending on the desired bandwidth and application. Some cheap generic cables may not ever mention the Toslink name, especially if they cannot meet the Toslink specification. If the receiver doesn't clean jitter properly then you'll have audible differences between cables. I KNOW there has to be some heavy opinions on this topic.. You might try a repost (and search) in the computer audio thread. Honest! I am sure they explain the science much better than I.

Otherwise just use the coax. When hooking up an audio system or sound bar, you generally have to choose an HDMI or optical digital-audio connection. Cables, Power, Tweaks, Speakers, Accessories (DBT-Free Forum). Read Barry Blesser's digital audio primer, published in the October 1978 issue of the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, available from www.aes.org . Im sure DUP will join me in not apologising for actually challanging some of this technical babble that is being preached in the interests of selling product and concepts.

Toslink's optical conversion eliminates this interference completely. At this point, the amount of jitter added is equal to the noise (or amount of error added into the signal) divided by the signal slew rate. Although TOSLINK supports several different media formats and physical standards, digital audio connections using the rectangular EIAJ/JEITA RC-5720 (also CP-1201 and JIS C5974-1993 F05) connector are by far the most common. Even when no music is played but there is power, a red light will always be illuminated.

Jitter doesn't involved data errors (unless it is gross) but the timing of the conversion of each data word to an analog equivalent. This video: How to Hook up a Soundbar to a TV using a Digital Toslink Cable. JavaScript is disabled. Plastic optical fiber is cheap. http://www.head-fi.org/forum/thread/529260/musical-instrument-fi#post_7137155. For the subjectivists: a lively blow-by-blow account of a Toslink/coax tag-team smackdown. Using the same DAC. For toslink, I used a glass toslink cable. The highpass part of the transfer function also plays a part (read the article linked above). One Toslink cable can transmit mono, stereo and surround audio signals. While it is true that HDMI has to a great extent replaced Toslink and optical cables for videos, they are still capable to a very high-resolution audio of up to 7.1 channels.