The Slow Death of the Optical Audio Cable

[M76]

Oh the elitists leap out from the shadows again. I thought this phenomenon was limited to music, but it seems home theater elitism is a thing also.

 

[BulletDust]

It is when you want to separate your video and audio outputs.

Why would you want to do that? If you're into 2CH audio, stick to TOSLINK, that's what it was designed for - For everything else HDMI is just easier.

 

[BulletDust]

Oh the elitists leap out from the shadows again. I thought this phenomenon was limited to music, but it seems home theater elitism is a thing also.

Or perhaps it's just your overall perception that's the issue.

It's a digital connection FFS, it does no more than shift the location of the D/A converters and makes DRM easier for the money hungry entertainment industry - Who really cares?

 

[M76]

Why would you want to do that? If you're into 2CH audio, stick to TOSLINK, that's what it was designed for - For everything else HDMI is just easier.

So much bandwith in one cable might cause faster signal degradation. It's like eating and shitting trough the same hole :-D

No I'm not saying that, I use HDMI as well, and it's good enough. But if you have a 100.000 home theater you might want to separate signals.

 

[BulletDust]

I can assure anyone out there that feeding a single, flat HDMI cable up the wall cavity is far easier than the days of component video and TOSLINK audio.

 

[M76]

Or perhaps it's just your overall perception that's the issue.

It's a digital connection FFS, it does no more than shift the location of the D/A converters and makes DRM easier for the money hungry entertainment industry - Who really cares?

It's a digital connection with no error correction. So it's not a guaranteed lossless transfer of data.

 

[BulletDust]

So much bandwith in one cable might cause faster signal degradation. It's like eating and shitting trough the same hole :-D

No I'm not saying that, I use HDMI as well, and it's good enough. But if you have a 100.000 home theater you might want to separate signals.

I see no reson why more bandwidth would cause more signal degredation. Hell, you can convert HDMI to Cat6 twisted pairs for 100m runs with no issue.

TOSLINK isn't immune to issues, clock jitter was always a major issue under TOSLINK.

 

[BulletDust]

It's a digital connection with no error correction. So it's not a guaranteed lossless transfer of data.

What? It is every bit as lossless as optical?! In fact optical is lossy as it hasn't got the bandwidth to pass lossless data.

Signal interference/degradation does not change a signal from lossy to lossless.

 

[Meeho]

Why would you want to do that? If you're into 2CH audio, stick to TOSLINK, that's what it was designed for - For everything else HDMI is just easier.

Because I want audio out of my sound card for its features, or I wan't to bypass my receiver which messes with the video signal, or I don't have an HDMI receiver, or I want audio out with powered down screens (an issue in some configurations), or I want a large length of a small easy to hide cable from my PC to my audio equipment...

 

[BulletDust]

Because I want audio out of my sound card for its features, or I wan't to bypass my receiver which messes with the video signal, or I don't have an HDMI receiver, or I want audio out with powered down screens (an issue in some configurations), or I want a large length of a small easy to hide cable from my PC to my audio equipment...

You can buy HDMI audio/video splitters, furthermore they're very affordable.

I've never seen a receiver degrade a video signal and stuffed of I want several video runs up the wall to my display device, I'll let the receiver do all that switching.

HDMI is TOSLINK with more bandwidth/features, the slow removal of TOSLINK is really not that big a deal and while optical may be immune to the issues of signal degradation and interference 'using quality glass fibre', it's not entirely without issues altogether.

 

[Meeho]

I still don't have sound cards with HDMI.

 

[BulletDust]

I still don't have sound cards with HDMI.

Most modern graphics cards have HDMI soundcards built into them.

I pass MPCM from my HTPC to my receiver just fine.

 

[Armenius]

I still use toslink for my z5500 set.

Same .

Oh the elitists leap out from the shadows again. I thought this phenomenon was limited to music, but it seems home theater elitism is a thing also.

You've obviously never been to AVS Forums.

Why would you want to do that? If you're into 2CH audio, stick to TOSLINK, that's what it was designed for - For everything else HDMI is just easier.

TOSLINK also does bitstreamed Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1.

I see no reson why more bandwidth would cause more signal degredation. Hell, you can convert HDMI to Cat6 twisted pairs for 100m runs with no issue.

TOSLINK isn't immune to issues, clock jitter was always a major issue under TOSLINK.

Good luck getting a 4K picture with that 100m cable run.

You can buy HDMI audio/video splitters, furthermore they're very affordable.

I've never seen a receiver degrade a video signal and stuffed of I want several video runs up the wall to my display device, I'll let the receiver do all that switching.

HDMI is TOSLINK with more bandwidth/features, the slow removal of TOSLINK is really not that big a deal and while optical may be immune to the issues of signal degradation and interference 'using quality glass fibre', it's not entirely without issues altogether.

It's fallacious to say "HDMI is TOSLINK." HDMI is copper wire, meaning you get less effective bandwidth the longer the cable run is. Bandwidth is consistent using optical. There is no reason the optical standard couldn't be upgraded to support more bandwidth. The industry is entrenched with HDMI, though, so it's never going to happen.

 

[Luke M]

Electrical isolation is a good thing (which incidentally, is not the case with all optical HDMI solutions).

 

[Unter Dog]

I use TOSLINK as the solder joints in the HDMI on my Onkyo receivers have cracked over time making HDMI audio flaky unless i jiggle the cable.

 

[M76]

What? It is every bit as lossless as optical?! In fact optical is lossy as it hasn't got the bandwidth to pass lossless data.

Signal interference/degradation does not change a signal from lossy to lossless.

Signal interference and degradation can cause bit errors in the signal. That happens regardless if the data type that is being transferred uses a lossy compression or not. We're only talking about data integrity here.
I also used to think that digital is digital I can wire it trough anything that about conducts electricity and it will be fine, but I learned since that it's not that simple.

 

[neural0]

You've obviously never been to AVS Forums.

This exact phrase popped into my head when I read that sentence.

 

[M76]

You've obviously never been to AVS Forums.

I actually used to visit there a lot, but didn't really care about the community. Mostly for video editing and capturing issues in the early 2000s.

And I also use optical between my TV and my receiver. HDMI goes into the TV, or the signal from air, and it's passed trough by the TV on optical. Early Samsung TVs (pre smart garbage era) used to do this.

 

[Armenius]

I use TOSLINK as the solder joints in the HDMI on my Onkyo receivers have cracked over time making HDMI audio flaky unless i jiggle the cable.

 

[Epic|]

Slower than the speed of light?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_factor

 

[BulletDust]

TOSLINK also does bitstreamed Dolby Digital and DTS 5.1

And not once did I claim TOSLINK couldn't support DD and DTS 5.1. I claimed that TOSLINK was only ever designed tor the connecting of CD players running 2ch PCM.

Good luck getting a 4K picture with that 100m cable run

You can get ~35m, stick a switch in there and you can then extend the signal further. It's a digital signal using twisted pairs to isolate against line noise, shouldn't be a problem. Under TOSLINK using the plastic fibers most use the longest distance you'll reliabily get passing audio alone is ~5m.

It's fallacious to say "HDMI is TOSLINK." HDMI is copper wire, meaning you get less effective bandwidth the longer the cable run is. Bandwidth is consistent using optical. There is no reason the optical standard couldn't be upgraded to support more bandwidth. The industry is entrenched with HDMI, though, so it's never going to happen

Optical suffers from degradation the longer the fiber run just like copper, something that naturally varies depending on the optical strength of the Toslink implementation on various devices and the quality of fiber used (and most use shit fiber that introduces a whole new set of issues in itself) the only difference is that optical is immune to signal interference, but optical implementations still aren't immune to the issues of clock jitter. SPDIF could have been upgraded to support the higher bandwidth needed to provide HD audio, in which case the only thing you'd effectively keep is the Toslink connector itself - But screw fucking around with delicate glass fibers over distances of ~1-2m when copper twisted pairs would work just as well without the bend radius issues of delecate glass fibers - Been there, done that, don't miss it at all.

Plastic fiber is shit, plain and simple - And most are using plastic fiber.

 

[BulletDust]

It's a digital connection with no error correction. So it's not a guaranteed lossless transfer of data.

Parity bit or not, once an error has occurred, there is no way to correct it under the spdif implementation. Use cheap fiber and errors can occur just like twisted copper pairs.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

And not once did I claim TOSLINK couldn't support DD and DTS 5.1. I claimed that TOSLINK was only ever designed tor the connecting of CD players running 2ch PCM.



You can get ~35m, stick a switch in there and you can then extend the signal further. It's a digital signal using twisted pairs to isolate against line noise, shouldn't be a problem. Under TOSLINK using the plastic fibers most use the longest distance you'll reliabily get passing audio alone is ~5m.



Optical suffers from degradation the longer the fiber run just like copper, something that naturally varies depending on the optical strength of the Toslink implementation on various devices and the quality of fiber used (and most use shit fiber that introduces a whole new set of issues in itself) the only difference is that optical is immune to signal interference, but optical implementations still aren't immune to the issues of clock jitter. SPDIF could have been upgraded to support the higher bandwidth needed to provide HD audio, in which case the only thing you'd effectively keep is the Toslink connector itself - But screw fucking around with delicate glass fibers over distances of ~1-2m when copper twisted pairs would work just as well without the bend radius issues of delecate glass fibers - Been there, done that, don't miss it at all.

Plastic fiber is shit, plain and simple - And most are using plastic fiber.

Jitter was considerably worse under early HDMI implementations compared to TOSLINK. It wasn't until adaptive re-clock was introduced into the HDMI spec that it improved. And decent fiber optic degrades a lot less and has a lot more bandwidth available to it than wire cable. Why do you think the highest grade internet connections are fiber?

I used both 20 feet of plastic fiber and over 50 feet of glass fiber with no issues. You just have to be careful to observe the min bend radius rules.

 

[King of Heroes]

I was always curious about something, optical fiber has been and is being deployed as a solution for gigabit home internet. So, clearly, the physical medium itself is capable of supporting enormous bandwidth. So why exactly is it that TOSLINK was never updated to support lossless 5.1, 7.1, <insert_number_of_channels_here>.1 over fiber? Was it just because HDMI was already entrenched by the time lossless multi-channel audio was a thing?

 

[velusip]

I was always curious about something, optical fiber has been and is being deployed as a solution for gigabit home internet. So, clearly, the physical medium itself is capable of supporting enormous bandwidth. So why exactly is it that TOSLINK was never updated to support lossless 5.1, 7.1, <insert_number_of_channels_here>.1 over fiber? Was it just because HDMI was already entrenched by the time lossless multi-channel audio was a thing?

The primary focus of EIAJ Optical was to achieve a standard for high quality audio (with no EM interference) over a very cheap and simple connection (one connector rather than 7 mono) in the mid 1990s. EIAJ Optical (AKA TOSLINK) became so widely adopted that S/PDIF was forever limited by this common interface standard. There hasn't been a real push to change or improve that since. However, boosted transmitters and better processing (via buffer) on the receiving end has eliminated the drawbacks (such as clock desync, loss, and cable grade issues) and can now easily handle really cheap, plastic-based optical cables. The underlying data standard (S/PDIF) went completely unchanged all these years partly due to this limiting interface, but moreso due to consumer audio rarely demanding for more. There's a pretty massive jump in requirements to higher quality, multichannel audio with relatively small overall quality improvements.

 

[BulletDust]

Jitter was considerably worse under early HDMI implementations compared to TOSLINK. It wasn't until adaptive re-clock was introduced into the HDMI spec that it improved. And decent fiber optic degrades a lot less and has a lot more bandwidth available to it than wire cable. Why do you think the highest grade internet connections are fiber?

I used both 20 feet of plastic fiber and over 50 feet of glass fiber with no issues. You just have to be careful to observe the min bend radius rules.

The available bandwidth means nothing when the SPDIF standard doesn't allow for it to be used - I've used 10m of HDMI cable in a single run without a single issue. I'm not debating the bandwidth available to fiber, that's a no brainier - The issue with fiber is bend radius and cost when considering 'decent' fiber.

The one main advantage of fiber is electrical isolation. Where I have to network two adjacent buildings where both buildings tap into the grid separately I use fiber due to the issues of AC frequency and networking equipment.

 

[Dekoth-E-]

I still use one because my soundbar is a finicky bitch when it comes to pass through via HDMI. Too often would I have video and no audio (even though both went through to the soundbar) and then have to try random combinations of turning the TV on and off and the soundbar on and off and changing inputs until it magically decided to work.

It still defaults to using HDMI audio when turned on but one button press to switch to optical fixes any issues.

Same for similar reasons..In my case the Amp is a finicky bitch. It just absolutely hates passthrough HDMI, but doesn't even blink at optical. The problem will probably go away when I finally get sick of all the quirks this one has or I manage to blow it up.

 

[BulletDust]

Same for similar reasons..In my case the Amp is a finicky bitch. It just absolutely hates passthrough HDMI, but doesn't even blink at optical. The problem will probably go away when I finally get sick of all the quirks this one has or I manage to blow it up.

Confused?

If you're using TOSLINK than obviously we're talking audio? Why would you be passing through audio when the idea of a receiver is to decode the stream?

 

[Trimlock]

I've never once had an issue with HDMI that I didn't have with TOSLINK.

I haven't used TOSLINK for years, the last time I used it was to connect my MD player to my CD player.

I absolutely hated TosLINK, HDMI is a billion times better to set up with.

 

[BulletDust]

I absolutely hated TosLINK, HDMI is a billion times better to set up with.

Totally agreed! One cable to handle everything is just so much easier, without the delicacy issues of fiber.

As stated, I've never had an issue with HDMI that I didn't have with TOSLINK.

 

[Trimlock]

Totally agreed! One cable to handle everything is just so much easier, without the delicacy issues of fiber.

As stated, I've never had an issue with HDMI that I didn't have with TOSLINK.

I always had to have a stack of (not very cheap) toslink cables for when something went wrong. 99% of the time it was the cable.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

I always had to have a stack of (not very cheap) toslink cables for when something went wrong. 99% of the time it was the cable.

Odd I never had 1 failure of a toslink cable. And I have a VERY complex setup.

HDMI however I had problems with water fall effect over 25 feet, broken connectors, both male and female socket where the cord got tripped over or yanked. HDMI is also more prone to falling out. Mainly it's not as secure a socket and the wire is heavier so it was more apt to fall out. They never did really solve these issues.

 

[Trimlock]

Odd I never had 1 failure of a toslink cable. And I have a VERY complex setup.

HDMI however I had problems with water fall effect over 25 feet, broken connectors, both male and female socket where the cord got tripped over or yanked. HDMI is also more prone to falling out. Mainly it's not as secure a socket and the wire is heavier so it was more apt to fall out. They never did really solve these issues.

Apart from simple breaks in the cable the connector would easily fail on pretty much all complements after a while making it impossible to keep the cable connected. HDMI doesn’t have this problem, also how are you tripping over the cable? If you tripped over a toslink it was guanteed broke.

I’ve had two HDMI cables fail on me in the connectors life span so far, both were due to oxydization. Both were also only $3 and monoprice. I’m using two 25ft cable I bought 8 years ago and going strong. I’ve never had that level of reliability with toslink.

 

[Arcygenical]

I always had to have a stack of (not very cheap) toslink cables for when something went wrong. 99% of the time it was the cable.

Never had an issue with a TOSLINK cable either. I have around 8 in service currently.

I will always prefer the TOSLINK standard due to electrical isolation. I build my own 3 and 4 channel amplifiers and almost always have a ground loop of some sort. Especially with switching power supplies. So, I strip HDMI Audio out to optical, and it goes away.

I don't believe in surround sound. In long narrow condominiums, I've always had much better positional audio using dedicated amplifiers (not Receiver-class shit). My TV Uses a 2.2 and my Computer speakers are 4'ft 4 ways. I appreciate this will change when I move to a house.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

Why would you want to do that? If you're into 2CH audio, stick to TOSLINK, that's what it was designed for - For everything else HDMI is just easier.

See my initial post.

As for bandwith and quality, optical is perfectly fine for 5.1 audio, which encompasses the vast majority of home theater systems. Yes it's lossy DD/DTS compression vs uncompressed multichannel over HDMI, but I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference unless you have magic ears.

 

[BulletDust]

See my initial post.

As for bandwith and quality, optical is perfectly fine for 5.1 audio, which encompasses the vast majority of home theater systems. Yes it's lossy DD/DTS compression vs uncompressed multichannel over HDMI, but I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference unless you have magic ears.

The difference between DD/DTS and Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD is like night and day, there's a vast difference and my ears are half screwed from years of loud music.

It's like the first time you hear a 128kbps MP3 and think it's 'pretty close to CD quality' only to realize after a little more listening that it really does sound like shit.

 

[BulletDust]

Never had an issue with a TOSLINK cable either. I have around 8 in service currently.

I will always prefer the TOSLINK standard due to electrical isolation. I build my own 3 and 4 channel amplifiers and almost always have a ground loop of some sort. Especially with switching power supplies. So, I strip HDMI Audio out to optical, and it goes away.

I don't believe in surround sound. In long narrow condominiums, I've always had much better positional audio using dedicated amplifiers (not Receiver-class shit). My TV Uses a 2.2 and my Computer speakers are 4'ft 4 ways. I appreciate this will change when I move to a house.

I used to run 5 Crown power amps off my receiver, never had a ground loop issue using HDMI.

 

[Trimlock]

See my initial post.

As for bandwith and quality, optical is perfectly fine for 5.1 audio, which encompasses the vast majority of home theater systems. Yes it's lossy DD/DTS compression vs uncompressed multichannel over HDMI, but I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference unless you have magic ears.

It will be fine for most but then again tv speakers are “fine” for most.

 

[Trimlock]

I used to run 5 Crown power amps off my receiver, never had a ground loop issue using HDMI.

I haven’t had a loop back issue either but I also use more then one circuit at my house.

I’ve been able to solve most others loop back issues, which really never started with the HDMI anyways.

 

[BulletDust]

I haven’t had a loop back issue either but I also use more then one circuit at my house.

I’ve been able to solve most others loop back issues, which really never started with the HDMI anyways.

I don't even know if it's technically possible to get any form of ground loop using a digital HDMI connection? RCA possibly, but not HDMI.

Stuff trying to set this up using Toslink: