Toslink and me: Need advice on buying a digital optical cable.
I’ve been looking through the buyers guide in a recent edition of ‘What Hi Fi’ for digital optical cables, but there was only one, the rest were coaxial. Before I go on I just wanted to check that, currently only digital optical has the bandwidth capable of carrying a high bitrate ’core’ mix extracted from a True HD or Master Audio track?
Basically I’m looking to buy a digital optical or coaxial (if it can support the high bitrate core mix) cable that is preferably 1.5 meters in length, is a ‘What Hi Fi’ 5 star winner, and doesn’t use any garish colours (black preferably).
EDIT: Should have mention price: £35 max.
Any suggestions?
P.S. I’d love to know why blu-ray players will bitstream a core mix over toslink but not hdmi?
I thought Dolby Digital had a maximum bitrate of 640 kbps, but was capped on DVD at 440 kbps, whereas DTS had a maximum bitrate of 1536 kbps and was also capped on DVD at 768 kbps. Apparently early DVD's contained the full bit rate for each, but it was later reduced so that studios could fit additional content on their disks. The way I understood it was that the core mix was the high bitrate signal and not the reduced bitrate found on later DVD's
According to Dolby the core mix found in True HD is 640 kbps:
Apparently I need a blu-ray player with an onboard Dolby encoder to get the core mix. I'm using a PS3 for blu-ray and the YSP4000/40D for my speakers/amp.
A little learning...
You're reading too deeply into this. I'd just use a decent optical link between the two - Chord Opitchord with a mini-TOSlink on one end will be fine.
SInce it's optical, and short as well, just about anything should work. Basically, it's a length of fibre optic. All it has to do is deliver the light from one end to the other. Because its's optical, there are no issues with EM shielding, capacitance, interference, or any other electrical issues - it just has to deliver an adequate quantity of light from one end to the other. That's it. It either works or it doesn't. The major differences are likely to be in physical construction - how thick the cable is, how flexible, how well it survives mistreatment - and whether it comes with mini-tos adapters - rather than signal quality. There's nothing you can do to an optical signal to corrupt it, other than dropping the transmission low enough that there's not enough light reaching the receiver.
Contrast that with a coax or HDMI cable, which although still digital, is subject to all the electrical interference and distortion issues - because it's digital, level information is hard to trash, but nice vertical edges can still get munged into ramps, which can mess with timing at the far end.
BTW, I can assure you that blu ray players will happily feed HD master audio bitstream over HDMI - that's how it gets from my DB30 to the Denon which does the decoding 
. (and very nice it sounds too!)
Agreed just buy ANY optical cable as long as it's well made, dont' spend more than you need to.
R
a little learning...
You're reading too deeply into this. I'd just use a decent optical link between the two - Chord Opitchord with a mini-TOSlink on one end will be fine.
Hello Sir,
I am trying to connect my Asus-g74sx laptop which is having SPDIF output,to my Pioneer LX-01 Dvd System through V-dac,could u pls mention some good quality(thinking low quality converter may reduce the quality eventhough if use What hifi award wining qed digital optical cable) toslink to 3.5mm convertors,i searched over the net which resulted in max of 5pounds convertors,If i connect my laptop directly to my system without the v-dac will reduce the sound quality??
You dont need to spend a fortune - I have one of these and works perfectly fine.
Its not black but I think you will find they do a slightly more expensive version which is black.
This one.
Great service too - quick delivery.
Sorted.
Edited - opps - just realised the first post was back in 2008 !!!
Anyway, for what its worth still a bargain of a cable.
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As far as I know all Blu-ray titles have a core mix - ie to standard Dolby Digital quality - and this can be sent over coaxial/electrical or optical digital and, depending on the player, by HDMI.
What are you trying to connect to what?
Consulting Editor, What Hi-Fi? Sound and Vision/whathifi.com Audio Editor, Gramophone