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Toslink Survey / Please Participate

Digital interconnection, IMHO, has always held many myths.

When I first began delving into outboard D/As, jitterbugs, and transport combinations, very few component manufacturers (for some stupid reason) were actually providing coax RCAs (75ohm SPDIF). Interconnection, in many cases, was acheived through the use of Toslink.

Now most of here already know that I am quite an extreme advocator of balanced interconnection including, digital signal. I personally use AES/EBU on XLRs for my 2 channel system.

Out of necessity, I have had to hook up my home theater DVD player to HT receiver using the Toslink (Denon DVD 5000/Denon 3300). And after listening for an extended period of time, I have to ask, (because I obviously must be forgetting),....... Why was Toslink so bad? Why do many people say it sounds like crap?

The system sounds fine. Very natural and "undigital". I won't mention the Toslink cable manufacturer, but it is glass, and the cable costs $39.95. No "Break-in". No "cryo" no crap, just hook it up and go.

When you think about it, many issues associated with interconnection are negated. Balanced????? No Need. RFI, EMI ????? Trivial. Impedance mismatch????? None. Adverse environmental conditions????? Irrelevant. Overall, a very easy, inexpensive, and sonically acceptable interconnection. I don't know about 2 channel usage, but if this any indication, I'm sure it would yield acceptable results?

Can anyone comment? Is anyone still using it for 2 channel? Even if just out of necessity, or otherwise. Does anyone find Toslink unacceptable?

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Showing 1 response by megasam

megasam's avatar
megasam
798 posts
 
I was using "glass" Toslink 1-2 years ago, but have come back to digital RCA cables currently. You can get great sounding generic glass 1.5 meter toslinks for under $30 on ebay with ever higher glass strand count. Back then they seemed to sound as good or better than any under $300 RCA digital cable I used so I gladly sold my expensive cables and just got a couple cheap glass toslinks.

The weakness of toslink for me was the loose fitting connection, if you look at toslink cable sideways you will notice it can sag slightly and not even be 90 degress CDP.
I suspect performance can be much improved if a better connector was developed.

I have since replaced glass toslinks with newer Sterovox HDXV digital RCA for under $100 and increased performance slightly for low cost. Also like Viggen I have used standard Bogdan analog silver IC with with Eichman Silver Bullet RCA as a digital cable with excellent results (Bogdan Silver Spirit IC) .
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