Toslink Cables: Does core material matter?

Well according to Baldr(Mike Moffat), he prefers Glass over Plastic, so do many others on other forums.

Lifatec brand seems to be well liked by many. Just wondering if SBAF has any good recommendations or experience to share on toslink cables?

 

True, I'm a Bluejeans fanboy, but I do tend to believe their technical info, even if they are, like everybody, trying to sell their stuff.

I used to use toslink a lot, in my early days of computer sound, because it was the digital way in and out of my RME soundcard. The only problem I ever encountered was a box being pushed back against a wall so much that it bent the toslink cable and severe distortion happened. I thought I'd broken it, but repositioning the box restored the sound. With glass, perhaps I would have broken it.

My fibres ran under a couple of yards of carpet: I'm amazed at Bluejeans testing successfully up to fifty feet! But then, fibres carry data miles (hundreds? thousands? I don't know how far apart the amplifier/repeaters are under oceans) and nobody complains about the sound at the other end.

My theory: knowing that it is glass that carries long-distance digital signals, coupled with a generations-old prejudice that plastic equals cheap, creates the bias on toslink cables. Of course, many people won't give them houseroom. Even if they are listening to internet-streamed music!

A year or so ago. I tried one of my over-a-decade-old toslink cables against USB on the same DAC. At first I thought I could hear a difference; then I realised I couldn't. But I could have been fooling myself either way, and my HF hearing had already seen better days.

 

http://archimago.blogspot.sg/2013/05/measurements-toslink-optical-audio.html



Although the author claims no difference between the cables, the glass cable has the lowest stereo crosstalk in results. It's not a lot of difference but it's not "exactly the same" as the author implies.

 

Oh, come now... selective quoting at its worst!

"the test results are essentially exactly the same"

See what a difference a word makes?

 

tried both: glass vs plastic with my theta DS pro basic 3a DAC and couldn't detect any difference between both...

 

I'm with Thad and Mad. You don't need to worry about too much unless you're making very long runs of Toslink, which is unlikely.

I have the Blue Jeans optical cable and it has served me very well and reliably. Far more than a long Monoprice cable I had in the past. I see no need for a different cable.

 

ST should by all accounts be superior? Such a rare interface though

 

From a physics standpoint, glass is less lossy, and you can probably get a larger difference in the index of refraction between the core and cladding, which should preserve the signal better, but this is all hypothetical. Glass is also probably more fragile, so more care needs to be take with handling it. Honestly, just keep the cable short and you should be fine. And don't get amazon basic, that cable was a PoS that had audible signal loss. Probably a bad cable, but I was glad to be rid of it either way.

 

Embarrassed to be asking this one. Is ST really just the same as Toslink electrically and it's a matter of difference of the connectors?

 

You're embarrassed? I don't even know what "ST" is!

 

I think ST is the industrial standard.

 

That's why you have to put the rubbers on the end to protect the c... oh wait, wrong thread.

 

Well, I suppose I shouldn't be lazy, and google, but do you mean the standard for networking or an audio standard?

Latterly, we had a couple of fibre links in and out of my office, but that was hands-off stuff to me.. Given the period (stopped work in about 2002), CAT-5 twisted-pair was as far up the scale as I reached with hands-on stuff.

I don't do video, neither games nor movies, but I was reading about the astonishing amount of data that hdmi has to shift for the later high-def video formats. Amazing. Why on earth do they stick with the same old electrical interface for this, I wonder?

I was going to say that toslink is more than enough for audio... except that it actually may not go beyond 96k sample rate. That is more than enough for me, but others' requirements may differ.

 

I meant networking, sorry for the confusion.

 

No problem, it was my confusion, otherwise known as ignorance.

 

Nah, it's definitely not on you. I just take too many things for granted when talking about technology. I work in a tech environment, and tend to forget that other people aren't in the same mindset.

 

Especially the abbreviations... yes, that's true.

At least it wasn't another TLA. The last thing we need is more TLAs!

 

IDK about glass vs plastic, but I've certainly had situations where some cables couldn't do 192khz and others would. (sidenote: the mini toslink out on a macbook, at least mine, REFUSES to do 192, downsampling (I imagine) all my 192 files to 96khz).

Personally i'd rather use a $10 radioshack toslink than use USB for the same setup though.

Which brings me a slightly OT but related question:
Why would you ever buy silver dragon or black dragon cables (moon-audio)? Blue dragon cables are honestly not TOO expensive and I suppose I could see buying them due to their many customizable options.