Do optical cables have a sound?
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- Опубліковано 2 лют 2024
- Any audiophile knows that different cables sound different. But does this apply to optical cables too?
Hear jitter (mentioned in the video) for yourself at www.sereneaudio.com/blog/what...
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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
We all know that a computer generates all kinds of electronic noise that isn’t a problem for normal computer tasks but is for high fidelity audio.
Could it be that the electronic components in a specific HDD brand or model generate some interference or electronic noise that somehow gets into the DAC and degrade the quality of the signal on the output stage of the DAC? So much so that it is audible.
So it is not just the ones and zeros being read off the disk but also the other artefacts introduced by the electronics in the HDD.
Replaced the old front hard drive with an SSD on my Mac mini. Noticed better sound right away.
@@user-jy5bi4ly8k Very interesting! That seems to confirm my suspicion.
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...
You can have less jitter with high fiber count that you can be heard.
Tos link is Toshiba link. Damn you learn something every day.
You need audiophile optical cables with gold-plated connectors; a veil will indeed be lifted
You jest but I’m sure we could be looking at quarter wave coating for the tips.
@@AudioMasterclass Yes, or perhaps a special index matching fluid so there will be absolutely no loss at the glass to glass interface. Of course, that could color the sound...
Dave, I agree with your comments here in this video. I have no problems with interference, so I use coaxial for digital, but I have used optical cables and found no practical significance in sound comparing a "good" optical cable to a coaxial one, but my experiences led me to the conclusion that optical cables are less reliable due to the variables you have mentioned.
Cable routing and conectivity at both ends seem to make a difference in throughput, and reliability is threatened by poor handling.
I have tried multiple optical cables of one and two meter lengths, at around £10-£15, and found quality quite variable in that price range due to quality, mating, or signal integrity, but, if a cable and its connections were "good," there was no sonic degradation. Some of the optical cables sounded no different with CD quality audio, but some would handle 24 bit, 192 kHz, and others wouldn't, which brings up some interesting thoughts. Anyway, have a great day Sir..
Accurate and on point as ever, Dave 👍🙂.
I would suggest that if you're buying an Audio Quest fibre optic cable between £500 to £1k, they will reliably inform you that jitter in lesser cables is a real problem 🤣
I always believed that fibre cables were better for long runs over 5m as there was no chance of interference.
A lot of people seem to point out that the analogue to digital and then digital to analogue conversion for this signal path uses lower quality components when compared to coaxial .The reality is, I honestly can't tell the difference.
What I can tell you, from a very recent experience, is the quality of plugs now used on many different brands of fibre optic cables is the biggest source of signal problems caused by badly fitting plugs or sockets.
Recently due to a lack of spare connectivity I was forced to run a fibre optic cable between an Oppo 205 and a Cambridge audio 851N using an expensive QED cable.
The connectors would not lock in. Under a microscope the plugs look poorly moulded, if I hadn't known better I would have said the cables were fake, but they were bought from a reputable company.
Ironically I ended up buying cables from Richer Sounds that were very cheap and they locked in perfectly 😫
The only thing lifted is the wallet from your pocket.
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. 🤷♂
As things should be.
And why are you not surprised....
It seems to me that this is more about comparing DACs than comparing cables..
@@pascalmartin1891 Not really. In my little test, I was connecting the same transport to the same DAC, just by connecting the optical and coaxial at the same time and switching between the two inputs on the DAC. I couldn't tell any difference, which really there shouldn't be.
@@richiereyn
I believe you.
Playing the devil's advocate: then there are people who can't hear the difference between a MP3 file and a WAV or FLAC file. A test where n=1, isn't seen as strong evidence. And: “Absence of Evidence does not mean Evidence of Absence” - Dr. Carl Sagan.
;)
'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 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'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.
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 :-)
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.
These are good final words...
Very nice comparison.
Very enlightening.👏🏻👏🏻👋🏼
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.
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.
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.
TOSLINK uses SPDIF which is a _synchronous_ data connection. This means the master clock is sent along with the data and jitter will be introduced, dependent also on the quality of the TOSLINK components and TOSLINK cable length used. The receiving component _can_ be designed to buffer the incoming SPDIF data stream and resynchronise it to an internal master clock, but at some point that would require drift correction; there is no free lunch. In practice many receiving components do not buffer, and due to dispersion in the relatively low-grade TOSLINK cables and optical transmitter/receiver geometry means that over long TOSLINK connections jitter will become measurable, although it may not be audible before the actual data error rate becomes excessive.
It was a long time ago, but I remember a device that received digital audio from a remote source and had to synchronise. It worked fine as far as I could tell, apart from the occasional click which, from what you say, I might assume to be drift correction. My memory is quite dim so that's all I have right now but it might be a matter I can consider for a future video.
@@AudioMasterclass Well, if memory serves _me_ right then *Naim* had (or still has?) a DAC that uses 10 slightly different fixed master clock frequencies and keeps switching between them to maintain the same _average_ clock frequency as the source; sort-of a continuous drift correction on-the-go. Presumably this does leave some level of jitter, but probably with a different (perhaps more benign?) noise frequency spectrum.
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.....
Inclined to agree. 😄
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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...
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.
Someone commented that latency is an issue using a stockbroker analogy but that comment seems to be gone. However, in a digital audio setting the latency can be and is easily remedied with a buffer.
@@michachemowski8518 The server latency thing in stock trading is actually an abuse of the system and should be regulated. In audio reproduction none of this matters. It does cause a design problem with digital effects processors because oversampling ADCs and DACs have significant pipeline delay. Unlike pipeline delay in e.g. recording consoles effect processor delay that shows up in real time can not be easily removed.
I am a pragmatic technical professional as well, Dave, which makes the most sense to me.😉
Good point about resistance. As I understand the amount of Johnson noise generated in a copper conductor is a function of bandwidth, temperature and resistance so I imagine one does not need to worry about this type of noise being introduced with optical.
That said apparently optical cables with glass clading and glass core are the best but I find that most manufacturers are mum about the composition so one can't really be sure of what they're buying.
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 definitely want optical connection for my future Hi-Fi!
I remember in the good old daze, audio files would talk about a good marriage between components, especially amplifiers and speakers. As every time a analog signal goes through any stage of amplification it is inverted and each stage can add its own distortion. As light is just a carrier for P.W.M. it should be a much cleaner transfer. In my tortured audio experience I have only come across very few amps and speakers that had a good marriage. But the few that did, anything that I played on them sounded fantastic and my search continues ! If I only could afford a 20 grand tube amp. to test my latest theory !
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!
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.
For some reason, between when I bought my last-but-one amplifier and when I bought my current one, they stopped equipping them with multiple RCA-phono inputs. The new one had one each of Phonos, Bluetooth, USB, Optical and Coaxial. With my record deck using the phono, I got my TV connected to the amp because it has a digital optical output. Figuring that optical cables aren't going to introduce distortion, I ignored the hype and bought the cheapest one that was long enough. And it works. Perfectly. My BluRay player connects to the TV via HDMI, so when I decided to use that to play CDs as well, it turned out that it had a wired digital output so that's the Coaxial input taken care of. I just used a cheap stereo connector with one of the wires unused. That also works. Perfectly.
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'.
. Interesting. How do I distinguish one DAC that does & one DAC that does NOT re-clock incoming toslink optical? Descriptions often don't say.
Is it true that a re-clocking dac MUST have RAM/data cache storage? (which, isn't that what read ahead logic needs & is called or related to PLL? (whatever that stands for))?
Thank-you.
Acid Jazz, Funk & Brass 🔈🔉🔊
. Or was it something somewhat coincidental? Such as when USB v2.0 came out with NO clocking signal path, then those DACs were forced to have on board clocks anyway so engineers just somehow filtered out the optical clock signal & used the on board clock? Whew.
Acid Jazz, Funk & Brass 🔈🔉🔊
@@TriAmpHiFi You can't unless you are told. That's why measurements in reviews are good...
@@razisn
What? Re-clocking is subjective? Why a reviewers ears & not a specification?
@@razisn
The Urd CDT's USB Out has no clocking. It's a problem for several DACs & reviewers don't seem to understand why the connection fails.
I am using a 15 metre Toslink cable between my wall mounted TV and a Linn DSM Selekt connected to a Primare i35 amp, itself connected with 10 m cables to a pair of highish-end Falcon Audio floor mounted speakers. OK, this is not a pure hifi arrangement because of the source limitations but it is certainly better than the Naim Muso, also connected to the TV optically. And the Muso is pretty impressive anyway and fine for TV channels. I only use the more upmarket arrangement when playing bluray concerts or opera.
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. 🙉
Great content. I've just tried this with decent equipment, old and new, and if there's a difference I can't hear it and neither can my iPad running the Analyser spectral analysis app. As Cdr. Spock will one day say: "a difference which makes no difference is no difference" as far as I'm concerned. I've taken realistic steps to minimise RF noise mind you.
I'm still not getting into one of those transporters.
Judging from the comments so far, I would say at some point an educational session re. synchronous vs asynchronous digital connections is called for David...
Quite a few commenters do not seem to realise that beyond the correct _values_ and _order_ of music data samples, the _sample_ _interval_ _timing_ is also crucial, something that can definitely be negatively affected in a *synchronous* data connection like TOSLINK (SPDIF), e.g. by cable quality/length but also by the quality of the optoelectronic components used. This jitter may or may not be audible but to deny its existence ("it either works or it doesn't") shows a lack of engineering knowledge.
This is an interesting point, as raised in one way or another by other commenters. Regarding jitter, I don't think an optical connection does either work or not work. I think the point where there is audible distortion or noise due to jitter is very close to the point of 'not working' At present however I don't know how to test this.
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.
Absolutely correct! Four sentences of bombproof reason in this in this poppycock audio discussion. Can I compliment you also in your mastery of grammar and syntax.
This is not about believing. The argument is that THEY hear the difference. And if you don't hear it, that's your problem. You can't convince THOSE who do hear THAT with any scientific or technical argumentation. :)
You are very wrong because a. you ignore phenomena pertinent to transmission that affect circuits before, during and after conversion to and from digital occurs and b. you are ignorant of the differences in the protocols of digital transmission (for example S/PDIF is not TCP/IP and Toslink is not Ethernet..). So your ones and zeroes might or might not be there in tact and even if these are in tact, quality of conversion to analog will still affected by things such as noise and timing issues (jitter). Any engineer involved in the lowers layers of digital transmission or in the ADA conversion knows that you are wrong. For just one example why you are wrong read @Roosville1 comment in this thread.
@@kuko61 It's as nonsenical as people who claim they are non-binary. It's a physiological impossibility.
It's way more complicated than zero and one 😂 the relation with time is the issue. That's why on good hifi sound system cables make a huge difference. 99.99% of people here have low Fi setup so yes any cable will do the job.
I love optical cables because I get weird noises when trying to connect my PC to my audio system with copper wires (I think it ground loops, and changing things visually probably send all sort of interference through the power supply), and they also get me surround sound for my Bluray player. I never really had problems with analogue connections through copper wires for CD playback though, although even there I suppose the digital signal starts optically reading the disc.
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.
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". :-)
I have recently purchased an AudioQuest Cinnamon Toslink cable which I use between a Marantz Ki Signature CD-63 Mk 2 CD player and a Chord Mojo 2.
This gives me “galvanic isolation” between the CD player and the DAC, so electrical noise can’t be transferred between the components - as others have experienced and described in the comments.
To be able to run a Toslink-coax comparison, I will first have to buy a Moon Audio coax cable that terminates in a 3.5mm jack which goes into the Mojo 2.
Galvanic isolation (i.e. no electrical connection) absolutely does not prevent noise which can be and often is transmitted by the toslink encoder.
What it will do is prevent a ground loop between two devices.
Is there a technical report somewhere on the shortcomings of the Toslink encoder?
@@johantheron4282
I'm sure there is. They probably exist inside Toshiba during product development and other companies as well. But you should not need some voluminous document to understand that A) any circuit will transmit it's noise on it's output and B) noise on digital signalling is largely insignificant... That's just basic electronics skill.
I remember back in 2005 getting all bothered about having my replacement studio monitor speakers having optical connections, and a good pro audio friend with a confused expression just asked me "why?". It was a good question and what I should have been thinking about is, which is the better connection; one that has to pass through more DAC circuitry that could degrade the sound or instead use higher quality monitors with XLR cables and better analogue connection with no extra DAC to bother about. I went with the latter and a pair of Quested S7.
If your source is digital then there has to be a digital-to-analogue converter somewhere. With passive speakers it's going to be before the power amp. With active speakers that have optical inputs, and there are such things, then the converter is in the speaker, before the internal amplifier. At this point I don't know how the speakers are managed as a pair but it's something I might look into.
@@AudioMasterclass Yeah I was referring to active monitors with optical digital connection. They may have been okay, but my friend was saying why introduce an extra unnecessary step in the signal path. Incidentally he used to have people come down to his business premises from Sound On Sound Magazine, when I worked there and met people like Paul White (nice chap) and other known industry people. I did not have any monitor conversations with them though.
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.
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 keep an open mind while being sarcastic 😂😂😂
Hi David could you turn your expertise to a comparison of linear and switching power supplies and perhaps Phil could extol some virtues of the former assuming that the linear variety moves us all further towards audiophile nirvana. Thanks for your precise presentation on all matters audio
Phil runs everything in DC from a stack of lead-acid yacht batteries.
Mr. Mellor, your assistant Betty has a brilliant future in the fine wine tasting and reviewing industry. For you however, I see no hope.
Don't worry. I'll stick to beer.
I'm making my popcorn for the comments.
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?
I mean, the ambient temperature, humidity and air pollution in the room could matter to a certain point, as sound is just air in vibrating motion.
You might be onto something here. Air absorbs sound, moreso when the air is dry than humid. So an audiophile might consider that there is an optimum humidity to get the best listening experience. I'll ask Phil.
@@AudioMasterclass these comments are all funny but I believe the most important thing is the ambient noise present in your listening room has much greater effect in the air itself
"than the air itself"
@@AudioMasterclass Anyone who has been in an old stone mill building used for rehearsals and studio recording, knows this is definitely a real thing. The different seasons do have an effect for sure. Or at least it seems to be the case; our perceptions are easily fooled! 😁
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 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.
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.
I've found that by wrapping the fiber that enters my home with Reynold's Heavy Duty aluminum foil, when I listen to Slim Whitman on my favorite internet station, I get an improved sound stage when he cuts loose with a power ballad. 🙃
But did the Martians' heads still explode?
(Edit: Watch "Mars Attacks" for the reference.)
I don't mind Rose Marie once in a while, with or without the foil.
Been using lightpipe for years, never once had an issue.
Skipping the “differences in optical cables’ sound” drivel, I can say TOSLINK is really a godsend in avoiding ground (pardon me! - earth) loops. For no good reason at all, I record the occasional NYC Met live opera broadcast on Saturdays, digitally, on Beta video tape, via a 1970s, Sony PCM-to-pseudo video converter. I then play them back - when no-one is looking - on my stereo about 10m away. I send the signal from the Sony, digitally. I tried co-axial cable, but that suffered intermittent “earth” loop clicks, like built-up voltage discharging. With my 10m optical cable, none of that. (And I know, I mentioned this before in a comment to your prior TOSsr@g video.)
If it works, it works. Enjoy.
Mum wandered into my home studio and told me I hummed. Turned out only a good bath and clean clothes solved it.
😂
It's not the cables, it's The associated conversion circuitry.
Nowadays, jitter in no longer a problem.
Tell that to an audiophile.
Yup, I surely can hear a 0.000004% improvement when I use gold-played optical cables.
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.
I'd say...if anyone believes that they can hear differences in optical "cables," I'd like to know if they determined this via a double-blind test? How accurately were they able to pick the "better" cable? Or, in other words, how accurately were they able to pick the same cable/cables with different content?
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.
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
The older I get, the less I believe or disbelieve anything. I have in mind a test of optical cables for a future video where we may, or may not, hear something.
@@AudioMasterclass I must admit that I am very intrigued to see your solution.
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.
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.
Comment readers might like to know that the price I see today for the DH Labs Glass Master is £220 GBP. The D-750 is a mere £41.71.
I use Toslink wherever I can.
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.
Do optical cables have a sound?
No, theyre transparent.
ill see myself out.
Some of us are trying to shine a light on the facts here and the frequency of comments like this are distorting the issue!
For any given sampling rate and bit depth I do not hear a difference between optical, coaxial or USB and I've used multiple cables in all instances.
As it should be.
The only difference would be if there was some leakage of noise into the analogue components. With copper connections there is always that theoretical possibility, although on a well designed system it ought to be all but zero.
I used optical cables for a long while to connect my digital items to a DAC… but have since switched to coax… easier to get the cables for one thing and they are cheaper… and a digital coax connection can carry more information and also may provide some grounding benefits… It can support higher quality audio up to 24-bit/192kHz. Optical is usually restricted to 96kHz. But I guess that if the signal is less then 96kHz then probable makes no difference, To be honest I could hear no difference in my system. But when I have a choice I go coax.
Coaxial cables are connected through insulation transformers (or should be), so no "grounding benefits". The transformers also negate the jitter benefits of a coaxial connection. I have a 192kHz optical sound card, it just doesn't work because the drivers don't work any longer.
The only reason we use an optical cable is that it’s the only way to get sound from our TV to our amp (other than the crummy 3.5mm headphone output on the side of the tv which sounds objectively terrible).
Do not speak about sound differences but listen a sound differences !!! :) Even optical cables sound different !!!
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.
@@nicksterj I do believe that's what I'm inferring.
There are radical differences in all the components that have nothing to do with wire or connects. Speakers are quite obviously different. The design, quality and type of the many individual parts to amplify a very small signal to obe strong enough to drive speakers or headphones or whatever.
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
Saying that sound via Toslink sounds different depending on the type of optical cable is the same as saying audio streaming sounds different, depending on your ethernet cable.
Don’t forget that you need to cryo-treat your optical cables as well as elevate them from hard reflective surfaces with aerogel blocks. 😂
Don't forget to protect them against high-energy neutrinos from the galactic plane.
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.
Basically for me... All digital transfer way are like... It's there, or it's not there.
If you're put of sync or drop outs, or errors, something is wrong.
I have used TOSlink cables in the past, but I'm not a fan. The reason is that the cable's plugs seem to fall out of their sockets all too easily. No sound? Why? Oh, the TOSlink has fallen out. Of course, that could be due to user error.
😂😂😂
Cheap toslink cables are the best for digital sources, flawless sound and no interference...
I use ONLY optical cables from my PC to equipment. Electrically isolating the PC is better than all the hum and groundloops x1000.
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 UA-cam Audio Engineers.
Sure helps sell those 300 dollar plug ins modeled after 6000 pieces of gear though.
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
Wait until audiophiles learn about ethernet collisions.
Ya, get Phil to do the tidy up
it would make a difference if we are comparing a 50 cent cable with a 5 dollar one. The 50 cents Toslink usually can't endure abuse/bending. 5 dollar one is definitely a winner :)
I think you're right here. If an optical cable were used like a professional audio cable - connected and disconnected repeatedly, then it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't last long.
yes if you drop them over a snare drum...
Two rhythm sticks up.
I can tell you're an audiophile from watching the slow, almost imperceptible head movements you make as you listen. I am not an audiophile, indeed I've only just discovered what a dac can do, and previously listened to my files on Logitech P.C speakers. I can see you wince. I've upped my game with seperate vintage amp and cd, and added a WiiM streamer, plus some budget Wharfedales that sound wonderful to my unrefined ears. But now I'm worrying about earth loops, and like a post here I can hear my big freezer (outdoors in the barn) kick in, as a tiny click. That has started to annoy me, even though it has only happened a handful of times, which is why I'm here. I've started wrapping power bricks in foil, and have sorted the whole mess of cables behind my study desk. Bear in mind that's with a sub £500 system- what would I be like with more revealing gear? Is there any end to this? I'm hearing or imagining stuff and am currently looking for someone willing to sit and rip my cd collection to FLAC, because the entire 120GB is on MP3, and now they sound dreadful. I can't use my wireless earbuds in the gym anymore they sound so poor after my Shure IEMs I bought used on eBay. I am currently thinking of ways I can explain to my wife why I need, at the very least, budget audiophile speakers. It's a disease, but it's got me listening and enjoying my music more than I have for thirty years. Thanks for your great videos, I love your presentation style.
_"But now I'm worrying about earth loops, and like a post here I can hear my big freezer (outdoors in the barn) kick in, as a tiny click."_
That little click is not an earth loop, it is your freezer posting a spike or crushing a couple of cycles of AC. There might actually be a problem in the motor start circuit in the freezer.
If you had an actual loop you'd know it... your system would be humming at either 50 or 60 hz depending where you are.
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）
I can actually add something useful to this conversation! Maybe. I work on ships after having left a job in investment banking some years ago. My last ship and probably future ships lay or repair undersea fiber optic cable.
Here is the relevant bit...maybe. The signal does degrade with distance and this is remedied by something called a repeater. The repeater takes the signal in, boosts it, and sends it on its way. How it does this, like much of the system, is in the industry called PFM (Pure F-ing Magic). The distance between repeaters, however, is measured in miles or kilometers, not meters; many miles and many kilometers, not 10 - 30 meters. I know you ruled out the length of cable as an issue, but I wanted to point out that it is laughable to me that it could degrade in a home audio setup because of distance. The importance of not bending or crushing it is certainly an issue, but we bend it within the limit under pretty massive amounts of tension (weight of the cable times many miles of cable down to the sea floor), so it does not need to be babied Obviously we are working thicker cable so it can be bent less, but it was shocking to me how small the cable is even between countries worth of data traffic. Remember, we are talking about flashing lights at different wavelengths moving at the speed of light. It either works or it doesn't is the answer.
Can you get over well over 10 meters by orders of magnitude pretty easily on the base ~3.1MBit rate spec?
There is plenty of modal bandwidth to do so, but the attention is around 180dB/km (0.18dB/m), which is around 500 to 1000 times what you can get on singlemode (wavelength dependant) and the link budget isn't going to be very big.
It is not designed to deliver audio across a city, but part way across a room.
It is cheap, robust, easy to connect, eye safe.
hilarious ----- One needs the diamond strand cables that have been impregnated with phantom neutrinos
You're still going to have to worry about faster-than-light particles. They'll spoil your sound before you've even listened to it.
@@AudioMasterclass True.
My 67-year-old ears can't tell the difference between optical and RCA connections.
Thanks for contributing John! lol
🤔just like with speaker cables, this kind of thing brings out the "aural imagination" of people way beyond the "reality" differences😂😂
I think it might be a positive to have aural imagination.
That anyone would think there is a difference in TOSLINK cables, beyond whether they work or not, is laughable.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Are not the data points at the ons and offs? And isn't the speed of light 186,000 miles/sec.and constant. Bearing this in mind shouldn't all optical links sound the same. My preference would be optical for digital and wire for analogue if my equipment allowed it. Which it doesn't,
The speed of light in optical fibre is generally about two-thirds that of light in a vacuum. So about 200,000 instead of 300,000 km/s. Not that it matters a jot within an audio system. However, it does matter over distances measured in thousands of km if you are trying to sync up sound and video from different places due to the inescapable latency (which is about 1ms per 100km round-trip times). Musicians in studious separated by thousands of kilometres can have real trouble playing in sync due to the latency (which also impacts video too of course). Round-trip latency from the UK to Australia is typically about a quarter of a second, which is very noticeable.
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...
You can push more data through the fiber.
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.