Digital optical cableColor: Black, white, grey
Uses: Transfers digital audio
Connector: Fiber-optic
Max Length (standard cable): approx 33ft
Optical connection
This cable may look like there’s a wire inside, but in fact it is a coated strand of flexible plastic or glass. If you look at the end of this cable (NOT WHEN IT IS PLUGGED IN), you’ll notice a transparent tip. What you’ve got here is a real fiber-optical cable.
Toshiba created this cable in 1983 to connect their CD players to their receivers and it quickly became adopted by manufacturers to connect all CD players. It became apparent that one of the benefits to this optical cable was that it wasn’t susceptible to outside line interference that other “wire based” cables experienced.
The cable transfers the digital audio signal along the strand of flexible plastic or glass, on a beam of light. The cable uses a series of on/off pulses of light when transmitting… it does not utilize a laser, but rather an inexpensive LED.
The average consumer can use the standard digital optical cable for their setup, but for those of you feel you need a higher end optical cable to separate “mediocrity from excellence”, there are 3 factors to consider when purchasing one:
1) Quality of the inner strand of flexible glass
2) Clarity of the optical connection (tip ends)
3) Flexibility without signal loss