# How long can a TOSLINK cable be before degradation occurs?



## dizzyorange

How long can an optical TOSLINK cable be before there is signal degradation? Is this distance different with glass and non-glass cables?

 Will a 3ft plastic fiber cable be any worse than coaxial?


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## Morph201

either 6 or 9 ft, my memory is failing me!


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## Kees

Opinions vary, but up to 5 meter is generally considered to be no problem at all. Some say 20 feet (7 m). I never tried these lengths myself I have to say.


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## Lord Chaos

Fiber being fiber, I'd say it ought to be good for around 10 kilometers. Depends on the power budget of the receiver, and how good the connectors are. Once it's in the fiber... Foom! It's outta there.


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## blinx

i think the max is 500meters. But thats for computer networking. Im sure its no different for toslink


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## Herandu

Network use of fibre optic has the advantage of error correction via handshaking. The humble audio use is not so lucky. 
 The max length depends on the laser output power at the source end, optical lead transmitting medium purity, receiver end accuracy.
 Glass is more pure than plastic, so better for long runs.
 Some manufacturers use specially designed optical connectors that refocuses the laser beam in order to get or maintain a sharply focused signal even if it is week in strength. In the outside world people use optical repeaters to maintain beam strength, but we don't have such luck in the home.
 My DAC came with an optical lead that has one of those special connectors that try to tidy up any out of focus incoming optical signal. I did a number of tests to find out if it actually worked. It did perform better in those tests.


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## Kees

Quote:


  Originally Posted by *Herandu* /img/forum/go_quote.gif 
_Network use of fibre optic has the advantage of error correction via handshaking. The humble audio use is not so lucky. 
 The max length depends on the laser output power at the source end, optical lead transmitting medium purity, receiver end accuracy.
 Glass is more pure than plastic, so better for long runs.
 Some manufacturers use specially designed optical connectors that refocuses the laser beam in order to get or maintain a sharply focused signal even if it is week in strength. In the outside world people use optical repeaters to maintain beam strength, but we don't have such luck in the home.
 My DAC came with an optical lead that has one of those special connectors that try to tidy up any out of focus incoming optical signal. I did a number of tests to find out if it actually worked. It did perform better in those tests._

 

X2.


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## DSlayerZX

interesting, what kind of connector do you use to focus the beams. I am interested to know since I might get into the sound card>DAC area.

 But anyway, to the OP
 I believe that a optical cable can run at around 10 feet with out suffering from sound quality lost.

 There are few threads that talk about this matter, But I believe most of the people pointed out that for optical, they really can't tell the difference between a short cable and a medium length cable

 (if the cable runs over 20 feet, then that might be another story)


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## penguindude

15 ft.


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## justin2net

wait, i thought coax s/pdif is better than toslink s/pdif. i think i read this while reading about the kwak clock.

 errr. optical for long runs preferably. as short as you can of course.


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## dmk005

With optical you should either be on or off with regards to results of your Toslink connection. It is a pure digital signal so there should be no audible degradation or improvement with "special" cables. Now glass runs cleaner than plastic so connections are more successful at longer runs and around slight bends with glass but we are talking 1s and 0's here so it is either good or bad. The focusing technologies simply improve the laser direction so that the light is more "centered" in the tube so that bends in the run have less impact on the on or off condition of the signal. By the way, coaxial always was thought to be better because early optical cables failed a lot. Both the laser component improvements and much improved materials/methods for constructing the cables have changed this over the past 5 years. They are now seen as equal by audiophiles but high quality coaxial can certainly be run much farther than typical optical.


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## justin2net

Quote:


  Originally Posted by *dmk005* /img/forum/go_quote.gif 
_With optical you should either be on or off with regards to results of your Toslink connection. It is a pure digital signal so there should be no audible degradation or improvement with "special" cables. Now glass runs cleaner than plastic so connections are more successful at longer runs and around slight bends with glass but we are talking 1s and 0's here so it is either good or bad. The focusing technologies simply improve the laser direction so that the light is more "centered" in the tube so that bends in the run have less impact on the on or off condition of the signal. By the way, coaxial always was thought to be better because early optical cables failed a lot. Both the laser component improvements and much improved materials/methods for constructing the cables have changed this over the past 5 years. They are now seen as equal by audiophiles but high quality coaxial can certainly be run much farther than typical optical._

 

^what he said.


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## dizzyorange

Thanks for the responses. I feel better knowing nothing is being lost in the 3 feet between my transport and DAC.

 Coaxial is not an option in my case b/c my laptop produces a strange EMI noise that runs through any type of conductive wire. When I hook up my USB transport to the laptop, every metal part in my component chain (including the chassis!) produces this noise if I touch a headphone plug to it.

 Good thing electrical signals can't travel through TOSLINK


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