Do optical cables have a sound? 

I can totally tell a 0.07% difference in the quality of my glass optical cables...said the audiophile trying to qualify to their spouse why they can't pay their rent this month...

Tos link is Toshiba link. Damn you learn something every day.

It’s no different than Ethernet over copper or glass. Bits go in, bits come out the same. Unless there’s damage and error correction can’t fix things. As long as the bits are mostly unmolested, there will be ZERO differences between media types. Digital is digital.

What I don't get is while super-golden-eared audiophiles are always concerned with the quality of their cables and plugs and such, they never consider the quality of the air in their listening rooms. For the best possible sound to make it from your speakers to your ears, you need cryogenically conditioned, nano-particle filtered, electrostatically-discharged, xenon-reduced, and never-before-breathed audiophile-quality air (containing exactly 21.0956% oxygen) in your listening room. I don't know how people are listening to music without it! And when was the last time most audiophiles had their earwax aligned to the RIAA standard?

How about under sea optical cables...passing Petta bytes of data and thousands of miles long...allegedly.... I think its just some damp string myself

You need audiophile optical cables with gold-plated connectors; a veil will indeed be lifted

Just bought a gold plated optical connection, of course, to avoid electrical interference. It sounds 0.000001 percent better than my original plastic toslink cable, but I didn’t let the measuring software fool me. In real life, the bass is more present, trebles are clearer, and the audio sounds deeper. Stereo separation became 3 dimensional and, depending on the weather, magnetic fields and local gravity conditions, I can feel the musicians in the room!

There was a speaker at the Rocky Mountain Audio show who stated that in Computer Audio, different Hard Drives will have a different sound. It always amazed me that no one in the audience choked on that

Big portion of you streamers are using fibre optic to your residence, tidal, qobuz etc. Huge distances ok but a 1m not good enough for you?? Don't cheap out though because borosilicate glass one made big difference in my system. Don't use cheap plastic ones. The one going to your house are regulated and of high quality.

So I have a Marantz K1 Signature SACD player, and for fun one day I decided to use the Toslink and spdif into an external DAC and got a really nice dynamic CD with a good soundstage and my challenge was to tell the difference. Changing between optical and coaxial on the DAC and I couldn't tell any difference whatsoever. 🤷‍♂

I've used several different "brands" of optical cable over the years. Most were of the Radio Shack stock and most were purchased for helping out a friend with their home theatre setup. If there ever was a difference I would consider it so nominal as to be insignificant. For my personal usage, it was purely utilitarian. By routing from my mixer 8 bus outs directly to my ADAT and using the "optical" cable to my interface, I would then have the whole 8 XLR inputs on the interface still open. Thus I could then track 16 inputs simultaneously. What's not to love about that? Essentially, every mic/input is still running through traditional copper cables, but the "optical" bridge from the ADAT to interface just doubled the track count. Like I said, simply utilitarian. In the scenario I use it I could care less if there were some teeny bit of oddity going on, this is just capturing a performance. It'll get mixed later. To me, that's the true power of optical cable.

It is a fact that digital connections generally work or they do not work. A faulty connection will be obvious with drop-outs, stuttering etc, it is impossible for a digital cable to introduce audible effects such as wider sound stage, smoother highs, greater transparency etc etc. if digital cables really did mangle the ones and zeros then digital networks and digital computers would not exist because they would simply not work.

A bit is a bit is a bit, but is a whole byte being a pig? After working in noisy industrial environments in industrial controls and dealing with noise, inductive pickup, regenerative drive line spikes, switch power supplies....... an optical connection between my Focusrite Pro40 output and my Kii Three active playback system was a dream come true. No chance of electrical noise. Don't forget that maintain guy running that drill, that person in the kitchen running the microwave, that receptacle that the electrician switched the nuetral and hot on the plug, the video section of your receiver, the CD/DVD player carrier and on and on. Optical is your friend.

Do optical cables have a sound? No, theyre transparent. ill see myself out.

'Spreads out the BITs making the sound blurry' if that quote wasn't from you I wouldn't have believed it had ever been uttered. Hilarious stuff !....cheers.

I heard a difference in optical cables: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-AVZwHUkGKZo.html

In digital transmission, the sound information is determined exclusively by the order of zeros and ones. A change in the sound can therefore only take place if the order of the transmitted zeros and ones is specifically changed. No cable can do that, whether electrical or optical. Anyone who believes otherwise has a fundamental misunderstanding of how digital technology works.

Hear is my home theater setup. 43” Panasonic plasma TV 📺 on a metal & glass stand. 5.1 surround sound hi definition Panasonic home 🏡 audio system.🔌 Im using a Monster cable hi definition single filter power conditioner with surge protector built in for tv & home stereo. All 💯% oxygen free copper multi strand cables from Monster cable.1 Cox cable modem & 1 Net gear hi definition gaming wireless 🛜 router. 1 pc/phone/Internet cable wired in HD Netgear router hard wired in Cox cable modem because wireless connection is unreliable & slow internet connection.I don’t understand why the Monster cable glass TOS link 🔗 optical cable make a louder more clear audio. Using only pure copper cable for home stereo sound system, play a lower sound and the speech 🎤 dialogue from actors,film 🎥 was hard to hear 👂 audio is turned up ⬆️ high?(By the way my 6 year old Monster cable HD power conditioner/surge protector,blew out during a lightning ⚡️ storm ⛈️ in Arizona.It does turn on but make a loud rattle sound.The old Monster cable HD power conditioner/ with surge protection, protect my TV 📺 & Home audio 🔊)

it's possible that this came about in medical applications. Toshiba and Sony both made recorders for use in a surgical suite and electric noise is overwhelming in that atmosphere, optical cable overcomes that problem. the hospital i worked in the 80's was one of the first to start using these recorders. we had Sony and during the installation i was given a Sony true glass cable that i still use today. sonically, it is still better than any others i have tried. but that was at a time when Sony over built everything they made. just look at the 707 ESD cd player.

I tried 3 Toshlink cables I heard a difference . So, I went back to coaxial. Cables make a difference. Bottom line!

I have a chest freezer that is almost 30 years old. When its thermostat turns it off it emits an em pulse that is picked up by my guitar pickups or, any cables transferring analogue audio on my hifi as a pop or a click. Back when I had my amp connected via an rca cable and the sound was transmitted digitally, the chest freezer clicking off would cause a brief pause in the sound. Same amp hooked up with a digital optical cable- no pause. That's it, that the only tangible benefit for me.

I'm making my popcorn for the comments.

🤔just like with speaker cables, this kind of thing brings out the "aural imagination" of people way beyond the "reality" differences😂😂

I use an optical HDMI cables in a few locations. As i was having issues with copper ones not successfully carrying the 144hz video signal over +5m. Optical cables totally resolved the issues. No audible difference between the 2 different options

I her Jitter on special page that decibele all math. problem and use it on SIN{X} (sinus sound) - small is not hearable strong yes, norml that don"t happend on modern DAC littlebit. And now, author use jitter that can never happened extreme - mix it to sound - and is not hearble ;-) - and continu to some extreme of extreme where is heareble in real music ....

I am not an expert but I am struggle to find an optical cable which can support my 24 bit 192 khz for my current setup. I have tried 4 cables so far, and all of them are relatively cheap (including one from Monster) and none of work works for 192 khz (my input and output devices for sure support 192 Khz). My next try is to buy a multi borosilicate glass optical cable, which costs at least a few times more than those cheap cables (for brand ones like those from AudioQuest the price could be 8-10 times). I believe there should have difference b/w these different cables.

I have only one optical cable...for my TV marrying up its audio to my older...much older...AVR. And I have no idea what the brand is. I bought the cheapest DAC ($11.99) on Amazon, which came with the optical cable. And the sound is simply incredible. I have no intention of buying a second one for comparison. Like the Master, I am not an audiophile.

Optical cables are made of glass. Glass is HIGHLY resonant. So yes..... optical cables do carry added frequencies which equate to sound. Noisefloor. Another one of the many boogiemen created by RU-vid Audio Engineers. Sure helps sell those 300 dollar plug ins modeled after 6000 pieces of gear though.

Sorry to disappoint you, but if anyone can hear a difference between two TOSlink (or digital) cables, I would advise him to pay a visit to her/his physician because she/he's having auditory hallucinations. Toslink were a fad in the 80/90, you had optical discs why not having optical cables ? But it is the same exact signal going through a coaxial cable, just fed into a red LED (amplitude modulated) and received by a photodiode on the other end. So it is indeed limited by how fast the LED can be amplitude modulated (not too fast actually) and/or how fast the receiver can detect the red light. We actually have other optical cables in our houses today, and they are used for broadband internet, but they use proper optical fibre with industrial standard connectors and Infra Red transmitter/receiver. As for Jitter - it is the magic word that any true LP/analogues audio lovers like to throw at digital audio lovers to demonstrate its inferiority. My point: if you can hear jitter in digital audio, you should be screaming in horror any time you hear analogue music plagued by Wow&Flutter, harmonic distortion etc.. etc.

Sooooo, I have a cheap n cheerful Onkyo integrated amp (A9050) and my only "source" (so to speak) is a Raumfeld connector streaming box. The amp has a Wolfson DAC built in and the Streamer has a Cirrus Logic DAC - both dacs play 24 bit/192kHz. Where it gets interesting, is if I hook the amp up to the streamer using both the line out to RCA, and also the optical S/PDIF. I can then switch the inputs during playback using the amp remote control, and there is a very clear obvious difference! Using the the RCA means that the streamer DAC is used, but using the digital route means that the amp DAC is used, but as far as I'm aware these two DACs are roughly the same. However, using the digital cable the sound is way better! Everything is clearer - really noticeable in vocals, and the music just has a more forward presence. Using the RCA/streamer DAC route sounds duller and muffled! So to that end - and I really don't know if its the DACs influencing the sound, or the cables, or the combinations...BUT there is a very clear difference in my budget set up using the digital cable. I was quite astonished :-)

Yup, I surely can hear a 0.000004% improvement when I use gold-played optical cables.

RE the external "What does Jitter sound like" link. Jitter is from several sources, pattern dependant jitter / inter-symbol and then random jitter from PSU noise affecting bias points, the phase noise of the clock ect. In the linked article, a jitter of 2us RMS (not pk-pk) is added. My DAC clock is 45.1 or 49.15MHz dependant on 44.1 or 48Khz multiple. A clock period here is ~24nS, so the jitter represents 80X the clock, which is crazy. Anyway modern DAC's incorporate a phase-locked loop and de-jitter circuit, so it gets integrated to a mean and effectivly ironed out. Great channel BTW! A telecom SFP optical tranceiver will pass 1Gb/s or 2.5GB/s data and costs about £15 each. Multi-mode fibre will carry this over 500m no problem. I did listen to the jittered 1KHz tone, hilarious.

Worked In the Telecoms biz in the 90's! Yes there is a signal level measured in db and yes there can be too much signeal and atinuatrors are uesd when needed! Fishing line is all that is needed for toslink...

Phreaking.

Using Fibre Optic for your speakers brings a blackness otherwise not to be experienced.

What I found odd was when I got my first Laserdisc player, a Sony MDP-A3, it had a TOSLink for digital audio output. You'd think Sony would want to use their own SPDIF Coaxial output for digital audio, right? Truthfully the only time I got a "sound" from an optical connection was when I bought a relatively cheap 5 disc CD changer I intended to help make recording Minidiscs a bit more easy (since you could program multiple tracks over multiple CDs--making recording MDs in real time a snap.) Every recording I made with that changer resulted with some slightly audible tap. I could only guess that the CD changer's construction was a bit shoddy so it was picking up some kind of tapping noise from the spindle. When I used that same optical cable to record the same CD or CDs in my LD player, no tap whatsoever. So that definitely wasn't a problem with the cable.

If a cable is a cable and has no influence on sound, then an amp is an amp, a cd player is a cd player, a speaker is a speaker, a turntable is a turntable or are they. Why do people buy different equipment based on their preference on sound or manufacturer when in theory they all do the same job. Based on common theories that cables do not make a difference then that theory must be applied to every other piece of equipment. Unless that is, there is a difference.

"[ThE oNeS aNd ZeRoS oF gLaSs ToSlInK aRe BeTtEr ThAn ThE oNeS aNd ZeRoS oF pLaStIc ToSlInK]." LOL!!! Digital data is digital data. Whatever digital-to-analog decoder you're using, it doesn't give a shit if it's optical or electrical. It's gonna sound the same.

My 67-year-old ears can't tell the difference between optical and RCA connections.

yes if you drop them over a snare drum...

a decent system & one could hear glass v plastic right away. +glass tos, since it’s niche- will already hv a superior connection v run of the mill stuff bein ‘em catered to snooty audiophiles. The US Glass Toslink frm AMZ is $30 fr 1m- jus try ‘em out rather than regurgitating nonsense w/o experience. Back it up.

nope same for ALL cables......they sound the same,any educated intelligent audiophile will tell you that,sadly there so much BS out there and audiofoolery/audiowokery.

Do not speak about sound differences but listen a sound differences !!! :) Even optical cables sound different !!!

I have found huge differences between 5 euros and 25 euros optical cable. The more expensive cable is better, but I am not sure if a 100 euros cable really worths It’s a snake oil after a point. I ditched optical cables and replaced them with 40 euros Coaxial cables. More depth more soundstage and cleaner high frequencies.

With optic fiber, I am not sure if there is a limit to how much bandwidth it can support. It is generally the electronics at either end which are the issue (and if there is jitter, it will be in the electronics). e.g. Ciena provides transmission and switching products which with capabilities up to 1.2 Tb/s per wavelength, and you can send multiple wavelengths down an optic fiber (wave division multiplexing) and these are for metropolitan distances. I use optic fiber for my VR headset, which handles two 4K video streams, one for each eye. I also use optical HDMI for my 4K projector, as copper would end up being too thick and heavy. I would therefore think that optical cables have no sound. Copper USB cables, on the other hand, do impact the sound, which can be quite dramatic (depending on the sensitivity / resolution of your audio system). I compared the sound of different USB cables and selected the one that made my streamer sound closest to my turntable. Of course, if the jitter in your electronics is greater than that in the copper cable, you might not notice the impact of the cable.

I do not tend to believe in snake oil products. But, there was a noticeable improvement, IMHO, when I went from an AudioQuest Carbon to the Vodka line. I am streaming Max files on Tidal to a BlueSound Node II, using a MacIntosh MAC7200 integrated amp (this is where the connection is made), Bowers & Wilkins CM8s2 floorstanders with AudioQuest Rocket 33 speaker cables, and a Rel S3 sub with AudioQuest Irish Red sub cable.

I make and record music for fun in hopes of more and I tested many different ways to go about recreating the exact sound my computer makes for the listener. I have optical and coax outs from the same sound card and I found when recording the exact same song played through optical the transients would peak a tiny bit higher, co-ax was slight more rounded. The average listener might* notice the high end is ever so slightly clearer/crisper. Or also it could just be how my system reacts!

This is exactly the type of debate that got the whole world wandering down the path of inconsequential issues that sound intriguing simply because of the smooth all knowing voice on this man.....

I’d go optical anyday (toslink) for everything (when and if applicable) except speaker cable of course, it’s not hard to follow the bending radius rules, or making sure the cable doesn’t get crushed, mine either just hang or stay nicely coiled up and always a silent background

there is one other thing: my Sony TV s digital optical output is limited to 16 bits, whereas my DAC can handle 24 bits (which for now i can only have via coaxial cable from my streamer or blu-ray player. Just saying that optical outputs can be a little limited by the equipment itself.

For reasons I am too ashamed of to make them public, I bought two 5 m optical cables to connect the output of a sonos player to my DAC. The listening experience differed remarkably between the two of them. One sounded quite nice, as expected, the other one only produced silence, no sound at all! So there may actually be differences between brands.

It is by definition that any means by which digital, within specs, is transported has no influence on sound quality. The idea that optical could have an effect is total BS and would prove the one making the claims unfit to have any opinion on HiFi

Performance of Toslink (because this is what we are discussing here, not fiber optic transmission in general which is hands down better than copper) has vastly improved since it was introduced. This has not been due to improvements in cables or any changes in the protocol but due to a. Improved quality of the transceivers (for example most any modern Toslink transceivers support 24/192 rather than topping out at 24/96) and b. Improved handling of S/PDIF by DACs (mainly re-clocking and jitter reduction methods, which of course apply to coaxial transmission too). On the other hand, galvanic isolation (transformer based or even optically based in higher end systems) has improved source induced coaxial transmission electrical noise issues. Thus, any 'common knowledge' about Toslink (eg. jitter) vs coaxial S/PDIF (electrical noise) is up for revision, at least in well implemented systems. But, as we all know, hifi myths persist even when disproven by measurements. As always, the proper generic answer is 'it depends'.

I purchased a “JIB Boaacoustic Blueberry” optical cable from Amazon. It seemed to focus the sound and increase its clarity. I use it from my TV to my DAC. I use a 5 meter USB cable from my MacMini music server to the same DAC. After putting a “VPI brick” on top of USB cable the sound seemed a little sweeter and less aggressive. The VPI brick is a box of transformer iron plates that’s supposed to absorb electromagnetic noise. I suppose I’m a nut!

Honest to God I didn't know this would be a topic, that said, you can literally just stick a red LED into a toslink receiver and as long as the LED is connected to something (with the correct voltage for the LED) that speaks toslink it will work... Do optical cables have a sound? Not that I have ever heard. Only argument for glass over plastic is cable length (very, very long runs).. a 3ft plastic cable going from a CD/DVD/BD player to the receiver isn't going to change a thing unless the cable is broken which is something you can literally see... no light no audio... as for your link to the sound of jitter.. ive never heard a CD player make those kinds of noises other than in my youth when i barely touched the edge of a playing disc and caused the player to produce static with the music for half a second before it stopped the audio and re-corrected itself.

Optical cable can transfer more, but this is maybe more about latency - depend per LED diode (some SFP use laser, but this is for LAN/ fiber for storage or DWDM links - multi mode have 100m, single mode laser LongDistance SFP distance more that 10km , dark fiber more that 100km ) - but in audio is week LED diode and don't have 100m - i mix here LAN/FC/DWDM telecom links with TOSLINK ;-) - but tech is similar, only communication have pair of optical cable, TOSLINK only one direction - 1 cable. Optical and digital S/PDIF is same ;-) it is digital and is impossible make mess witj interferences etc - becuase he care obny about 1/0 and have CRC code code for detect error and maybe ECC - error recovery Problem with optical is that too much DAC don't suppot 24/192 in optical, but on Cooper yes - btw S/PIDF is not twisted dual link, this is tru coax - then is shilded ;-) - i switch from optical S/PDIF to USB - why ? source support 24/192, but DAC not, only on coax "only" 24/96 - and USB is better BTW for normal music is OK less that 24/96 .... My DAC: PCM 384kHz-32bit/DSD256（USB DAC） PCM 192kHz-24bit（COAX） PCM 96KHz-24bit（OPT）

Three short answers No No No. Digital cables do not transmit a sound, they transfer data. Perhaps David can explain the difference between sound waves and data. Apparently HDMI cables are capable of higher audio resolution and video simultaneously.

That anyone would think there is a difference in TOSLINK cables, beyond whether they work or not, is laughable.

All cables have a kind of hissing sound to them. It starts with what you get when you pull your jaw back and your upper teeth are resting over your lower lip. Kind of like in "f-ish". It's then followed by an eerie ghostly sound like in "sw-oo-sh" and it ends in a guttural "l". :-)

Of Course optical cables have a sound! (To deluded snake oil buyers with wild imaginations...)

The cables won't have their own sound ... the electronics decoding the signal might.

The question is not if wireless cables have sound it‘s whether glasses mounted on your nose and ears have sound or not or if the combination of wireless cables with glass hanging from your ears do have it. I am sure my wireless rear end system has sound, just like any other music instrument. ;-) LOL

I have discord Audio Phils telling me to replace my WiFi with cables, but not ethernet cables (oh no), with fiber optic cables connected to converter boxes each with their own Linear Power Supply....which are then connected via ethernet to the router and streamer respectively. Apparently this reduces noises and enhances blackness, or something. And it's galvanically isolated, unlike wifioh wait...maybe wifi has noise from the air? *I realize this isn't in the scope of Toslink, I just didnt think optical data would come up in audio recommendations until now and thought of this video

In theory there should be no difference in sound quality when sending a digital signal over copper, glass fibre or plastic fibre, so long as the cable used meets the specification of the equipment manufacturers being used, and there is no damage to the cable. It shouldn't be possible to hear a difference.

Mum wandered into my home studio and told me I hummed. Turned out only a good bath and clean clothes solved it.

No, they don’t.

The only time i can hear artifacts in a recording...i can only blame it on bad recordings.

I am a pragmatic technical professional as well, Dave, which makes the most sense to me.😉

Been using lightpipe for years, never once had an issue.

I come from an IT background. And no one ever has questioned the integrity of the cables transferring data over networks. And in some applications errors of literally one bit can render a file unreadable (encryption for example). If that works and always works in the same way I fail to see how a digital interface could cause any differences in digital audio transport if the actual cable isn’t faulty or damaged.

I use ONLY optical cables from my PC to equipment. Electrically isolating the PC is better than all the hum and groundloops x1000.

I definitely want optical connection for my future Hi-Fi!

If someone say that her diff. between digital cable, that is stupid - becuase necodding - and how about LAN RJ45 connectoprs ? - that support 10Gb and cable cost funny low - and use higher frequency ;-))

DH Labs Toslink Glass Master 😊

do you even have the lucasfilm ltd THX sound system , no that isn't home version , professional cinema , so your home cinema you ain't hear it all , expect down here

If you have paid god-knows-how-much money for an optical cable, it WILL sound better. Because that's the only way your mind can justify the amount of money you forked out. The same goes for other cables sold for ridiculous prices. 'This cost me a fortune so it must be better'. Yeah, right. Stop fooling yourself.

Short answer: No. Long answer: No.

Well why would I mess with different optical cables? I got a DH Labs glasslink and love it. Their D750 coax still better than glasslink but I like both.

It's not the cables, it's The associated conversion circuitry. Nowadays, jitter in no longer a problem.

I still use Toslink these days. Connecting my Computer to Amplifier via Line Jack brings noise and hum but as I go through my old Sony Mini Disc MDS-JB920 via Toslink, the sound is crystal clear and free of any audible distortion. AND: I don't need a dedicated audio interface to record my Romplers to Computer using the MD deck the other direction. Next thing I'm gonna do is record some samples of my old Roland SRX-08 board and they're gonna be in original quality because they go through Toslink.

Don’t forget that you need to cryo-treat your optical cables as well as elevate them from hard reflective surfaces with aerogel blocks. 😂

How long before the audiophools start telling everyone that the optical cables need time to "burn in" before they sound right?

As a serious audiophile i've not really heard of us audiophiles using optical, only on the network, i for example use an Adot mc02 in my network. I've never really thought about the reason why. I know that the £110000 MSB select dac has Toslink, i just don't think they are any high end audiophile Toslink cables that cost thousands of pounds, I know Audioquest do a nice Toslink for a couple of hundred quid.

my choice is optical 👍

I absolutely HATE the flimsy flap door arrangement on TOSLINK equipment connectors. Will it break on the first or second insertion? Cheap doodoo TOSLINK cables are likely to have poor connector to fiber mating that may cause signal reflection down and back the length of the cable which may cause confusion at the receiving end and signal degradation. Call me a Neanderthal, but I like coax. Ook.

Technically the problem its a abandoned standard so typically the mismatched between transmitter/receiver 44.1khz/16bits range Spdif up to 384khz/32bits is not guaranteed and I personal color my spdif with Op-Amps similar to Tube Valve swaps ( jitter is a complex subject with a simple solution) clean power. My experience come from owning multiple device if a difference is heard on TOSLINK the cause would be some type of defect!!! ( Outside of transmitter/ receiver) error or differences

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought TOS Link was digital. If that's true, then your AI girlfriend is talking nonsense that she can hear a difference between different TOS Link cables.

I am genuinly facinated by how much you're willing to entertain the audiophiles arguments on this subject, since you clearly know they are false. Doesn't it get excruciatingly boring having to keep arguing why digital audio cant sound anything but flat? Like thats the entire thing about digital. Its quantized, any loss of frequency doesn't matter as long as the individual bits are still readable. It can be restored perfectly. Claiming that a digital audio signal can be colored by its cable is like claiming that different qwerty keyboards can add subtle changes to your font. I do not have this kinda patience for this kind of thing. Its like if someone was convinced 1 + 1 = 4, and denying this deeply upsets them because of their emotional attachment to the idea. I would disassociate real quick

Toslink cables standard is plastic and is low grade for short distance only. Toslink is basically just a powered LED added to the SPDIF coax connections on the sender and receiving ends of each piece of equipment. It is a one way transmission only with no error correction the same as.a SPDIF connection There is or can be no audible différance between SPDIF coaxial or fiber Toslink as long as the rather limited Toslink bandwidth is not exceeded. Coaxial SPDIF has a higher bandwidth and is less likely to generate errors or Jitter than fiber Toslink, but are functionally similar. Totally fine for CD but not ideally suitable for very high bitrates. While Toslink seems to work on a 24/192 audio, in actuality it is beyond its spec and generating errors/jitter which may or may not be corrected by your DAC. For the higher bitrates, it is better to just use copper.

I use optical ethernet, not toslink between my server and my DAC. The cable runs along the wall under a dimmer, past numerous power cords, some of which have equipment with switching power supplies, and then up into my stereo rack past more power cables. Switching to optical over standard ethernet was very noticeable. I hear no difference between cables that are not damaged and made to spec. Damaged cables are very easily heard by ear as well, and sound like sibilance. Optical can not introduce jitter, only the hardware at the ends can do that. I had a cheap Amazon cable and you could hear the change in sound as you bent the cable. It is expensive to make cables to spec, I won't say that "audiophile" cables are needed, but cables made for professionals are, and should only be sourced from Western sources. Optical has *very* strict standards regarding bend radius, coating on the fiber, and end treatment (perfectly polished and square). Defects are very measurable, and losses are also easily measured due to bending. The 10x diameter to quoted is way too tight, the cables I have used usually state something closer to a 6" (150mm) radius. The 50' (15m) optical HDMI cable I use for my projector clearly states that any bend under 5" permanently damages the cable.

I've used fiber optical cables for 40 plus years at work in our tools. Many runs were 30 feet or so. At home, I used fiber optical cables to go from my house to a neighbor across the road so we could use our computers to race against each other. F1 game. That run was over 100 feet. I use TOS links in my system to connect anything that uses it to my RX A6A receiver. Just do relaxed bends. It's simple and clean. Years ago, we cut and polished the fiber optic cable to clear and then put a connector on the end. Love fiber optic and easy to trouble shoot. 😅

I set up optical for home theater in the late 2000s with a Panasonic AVR and Sony Blu-ray player. Over the years something was damaged on the receiver's optical DVD port. Now the link is in another port. I think no worries except the connection labels. I don't care for much beyond 2 channel now. Ordinary Toslink cable.

Is this a joke?🤔

Bending of the cable yes, you'll have light loss, but as long as the other end can see light, the data will be transmitted. Most likely you can bend these fibers as aggressively as you like and the light is still going to make it to the other side. So long as the cable doesn't break. Yes you will lose DB and light but it won't be enough so that the other end cannot identify. Yes I have light, No I do not have light, binary code ones and zeros

Problem with optical toslink is that standard is very old, and you can't have more than 96k audio... my laptop with USB out can do better, coaxial also... You can have better results from toslink on optical side - but that will be popriertary... not a standard...

First of all, it is worth realizing WHY digital signal transmission was invented. Well, a quite nice feature of digital transmission is its losslessness. Or at least in almost(more of this later) every transmission protocol. Without going into details - correction codes are used and/or transmission is repeated in the event of an error, so when you copy a file on a computer or transfer it to a pendrive - the copy is 1:1 perfect. So is copy of digital audio stream in the buffer of DAC. Additionally, protocols such as Dolby Digital or DTS(or flac) compress the audio stream and it is decompressed after transmission in the target decoder, e.g. receiver. If even one (one of many billion) bits were corrupted, the decoder would report an error or reproduce "digital noise" because the stream would become a digital sequence of random thrash and could not be decompressed. Transmission in any modern standard is lossless, and if the cable is damaged or errors occur due to poor transmission quality, these errors manifest as audible crackles, noise or "digital noise". Under normal conditions - the cable is undamaged, the equipment is functional - the transmission is error-free, 1:1, lossless and it does not matter at all whether it is an optical (and what kind) cable or an electric cable or anything else - e.g. wifi or ethernet :). Exception of this rule is the Red Book Audio CD protocol used in CD players. There is no error correction or compression here. Reading errors (scratched/faulty disc, dirty/faulty laser) are masked with zeros (silence) after several reading attempts and not corrected because there are no correction codes. Possible jitter is not corrected in any way (and it is rather an imaginary problem as no one can indicate what it means and how "jitter problem" sounds ;-) - even a microphone recording). The specification allows masking and a certain number of errors/sec because it is - unless this number of errors provided for in the protocol is exceeded by - completely inaudible. But if someone is irritated by this uncertainty of CD reading, the workaround is as simple and cheap as it is obvious. RIP the disc to losslessly compressed flac - checking the CD database for correct reading of the entire disc (CRC code) and opening these flacs. 100% read/transmission certainty.

A while back USB kinda sucked, at least in my old system. The amount lf audible noise, pops, and hiss coming out of my PC was very bad. Optical on the other hand was clean and perfect. I am just glad USB has improved over the last decade. Its a lot more convenient.

Got pro tools summer 1998 chose QS 8 for house keys, came with fiber option . We decided Against at the time because it Was another thing to interface. They never came up anyway. As Always great review. 🙉

I've been using digital cables for nearly two decades now, primarily optical but also coaxial. Until recently, I didn't really think much about it; I just assumed that every '0' or '1' transmitted would be received flawlessly. I figured any lost or misread data would result in audible distortion. However, it's a one-way communication system with no error checking involved. Even if a bit or several bits were to flip in a digital audio stream, chances are you wouldn't even notice it. I haven't experienced any issues with digital connections personally, but that doesn't guarantee they're flawless in terms of transmitting every bit accurately. Recently, when I had to resort to using an analog line out from a laptop, it reminded me of the significant distortion problems associated with such connections.

There most certainly is an optical analogue to electrical resistance, and it's normally referred to as attenuation or signal loss. The amount varies widely according to the type of optical fibre used and what it is made of. The sort of plastic polymers used in TOSLINK have very high levels of signal loss, whilst those used in very long distance optical fibres are very low. Of course none of this matters a jot where digital data is used up to the point where the loss is so high that the signal is unusable. However, that's just the same with copper as well. There are also other forms of distortion that can occur with optical fibre, such as dispersion, but again it varies hugely with material and implementation (it is, however, particularly bad on TOSLINK fibre connections). However, that only affects range and speed and not data integrity when used digitally. Note that there are situations where optical fibre is used in a purely analogue manner, such as some types of borescopes (not the ones where there's a small camera at the end), but that's pretty rare, and none of them are relevant to audio. Nothing to stop it being used that way, save it's stupid, but it could be done. However, on key difference with electrical analogue is that there would be zero difference in frequency response for analogue optical signals at audio frequencies.