Which Lightpipe Cable?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Giganova
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Giganova

Giganova

gimmi your mic!
hi --

I need a lightpipe cable to hookup an ADAT interface with an optical sound card. I saw that Guitar Center sells 9' Toslink cables for $39.99 each + tax -- and on Ebay a 12' "Digital Audio Optical TOSLink Cable" costs $2.95 plus s/h. The Ebay cables even have heavy 0.5mm gold-plated jacks, while the ones at Guitar Center are just plastic jacks.

So is there a differenece in quality between these lightpipe cables?? :confused:
 
I use the cheap cables, there is no difference as long as they don't break and the connection is secure. Think of it this way, how expensive is the cable connection your hard drive and cd-r to your computer? Probably less than $1 and it carries more data than ADAT. And if it messed up a single bit your computer would bomb pretty fast.
 
That's what I thought, glad to hear. Thanks!

A factor of 5 price difference is rather dramatic! Imagine buying a BMW 7-series for like $50k and then you see a dealer down the road who charges $10k for the exact same car and even puts on gold rims for free :D
 
I use less expensive HOSA lightpipe cables and they work fine.
 
Yes, these HOSA cables are $39.99 at my local Guitar Center.
 
Giganova said:
Yes, these HOSA cables are $39.99 at my local Guitar Center.
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I guess I forgot how expensive they are. It's been a while since I had to buy one. The cables I'm talking about are the HOSA OPT series.

The nice thing about analog and AES/SPDIF cables is that you can make your own. With optical, you just have to buy them.
 
With optical, you just have to buy them.

That's true, but in nearly 5 years I've never had a fiberoptic give me problems, vs many years of fighting loose solder joints, corroded tips, and disconnected shields with analog cables.
 
I had a TOSlink cable go bad on me. The end of the cable got cracked somehow, where the light comes out. So it was like a cracked lens basically, and it really messed with the data. It was a "premium" cable too, I paid a lot for it.

Since then I just buy the regular HOSA OPT line and have had no problems at all. The connectors are tight, everything seems fine.
 
ususally if the cable is defective you can hear it in the play back or it screws with the clocking or display.

The only advantage of a more expensive toslink is for longer distances you can swithch to a glass fiber toslink, which is higher quality than the standard platic fiber on most toslink cables. But if you are not going over 15' -20' or so you should be fine.
 
Thank you all for your reply, that was very interesting what you've said.
 
Defective Cable?

Wire said:
ususally if the cable is defective you can hear it in the play back or it screws with the clocking or display.
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So, that occasional ear peircing loud crackle in my DAW could be coming from my toslink cables? Hmmm, I never thought of that. I thought it was due to a glitch in my software having something to do with sample rate.
 
Giganova said:
The Ebay cables even have heavy 0.5mm gold-plated jacks, while the ones at Guitar Center are just plastic jacks.
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Make sure you are getting what you think you are. I can think of no reason for optical cables to have gold plated jacks. :confused:
 
reshp1 said:
I can think of no reason for optical cables to have gold plated jacks. :confused:
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I guess its to make the connection more stable mechanically.
 
Supposedly, but yean, the gold plated ones are heavier and I've had problems with them seating into the Toslink jacks properly.
 
Giganova said:
I guess its to make the connection more stable mechanically.
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I don't see how gold plating would matter. The ones I have with plastic ends seat very firmly into the jacks. It's actually hard to get them out sometimes.
 
Giganova said:
Now I'm confused: I saw that BSW has "Toslink" and "fiber-optical" cables, which look almost alike, but the plugs seem to be slightly different. Is there a difference??
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Hmmm. I've always thought that TOSlink, fiber-optical, and ADAT were the same thing. It's possible that the plugs are different simply because they are from a different manufacturer and the design varies between them. Like the difference between Soundcraft and Neutrik connectors. They do exactly the same thing, but look a bit different.
 
Could be, I guess you are right. We'll see when I get the cables if they fit.
 
"Toslink" is from Toshiba, who first manufactured the fiberoptic cables with those particular connectors. They can be used as stereo S/PDIF or ADAT lightpipe (8 channel), depending on what you are connecting. The only difference in fiberoptic cables that I have seen is that there is another S/PDIF optic standard that uses an end that looks like an RCA plug, but those are not "Toslinks". The data transfer is the same, but they connect to differently shaped jacks. I seem to see them more often on consumer gear.
 
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