How long can optical audio cable be

Another common use for this type of connection is for connecting your TV to your hi-fi sound system or soundbar — or for wiring your CD player to an amplifier.

For example, if you get your TV transmissions via an internal tuner or a smart TV app, then you might want to send the audio from your TV into your home theater speaker system. Most modern TVs have an optical audio output for this purpose. You connect the optical audio output on the rear of your TV to an optical input on your AV receiver or amplifier. This refers to the developer of this connection type, Toshiba. In this type of connection, the digital signal is converted into light and transferred via a cable made from optical fiber.

This fiber optic cable can be quite thin, so you need to make sure that you are careful when handling it. You can break the core if you bend it too much. Optical cables for digital audio are usually constructed with multimode plastic optical fiber POF. This is cheaper than alternative options such as glass or silica optical fibers — but is perfectly suited to short runs typical in home audio applications.

Aside from an HDMI cable, there are two main methods of connecting devices to send digital audio — optical and coaxial digital audio. Sony and Philips were both involved in the initial design of this audio connection. You often find these two connections side-by-side on a device as in the picture at the top of the page — or you may get one or the other. If you have both, the decision of which one to use will usually come down to something simple such as the type of connection you have on the other device.

Connecting an optical cable from a TV to a home theater system is a relatively simple process. The basic steps are:. For more detailed information on this, go to how to connect an optical audio cable to my TV and soundbar. Optical cables used for digital audio come in a wide range of lengths, colors — and prices! Well, not in my opinion, no. I would just buy a good value, well-made brand. Note the emphasis on well-made. The cheaper cables are quite thin and so you should be careful when connecting your equipment together.

However, the more expensive cables may prove to be more robust and should cope better if you regularly reconfigure your wiring. They will also likely perform better if you want to run the cable over a long distance. You may see cable manufacturers claim that their optical cables support the transfer of high-resolution audio and Dolby Digital Plus. While this might be technically true in terms of bandwidth, you are unlikely to find many devices that will support these audio formats via their optical connections.

The AmazonBasics digital optical audio cable should do the job just fine — however, there are other good value brands there too like this KabelDirekt digital optical audio cable:. KabelDirekt cables offer excellent quality at a very competitive price. This optical audio cable has male-to-male gold-plated connectors and is available in several different lengths.

Just make sure you double-check the length of the cable you are buying and get the right size for your needs. A well-made optical audio cable should work well up to 5 meters. You may even find that you will get a good signal at 10 meters or more. However, by the time you get to this length, then you are more likely to run into problems. It would certainly be worth considering buying a higher-quality digital optical cable for longer runs. The electronics built into your hardware can vary in quality.

These extenders use Cat5 or Cat6 cable to send the optical audio signal over very long distances. Many people wonder which connection they should use to send audio between their devices — optical or HDMI cables. If you are sending the same type of audio format, then it will sound the same regardless if you are using optical or HDMI.

So, does the data begin to fade at that length of cable? If so, would buying a higher priced one be better? Otto Pylot Member. Price is not necessarily a guarantee that any cable will work for your needs or expectations. They are not cheap but do get the most positive reviews from actual users and installers than any other mfr. Just be mindful of bend radius, even though the Ruipro cables have a very generous bend radius. It's very reliant on the sender diode and these can be a bit variable.

It's not like a true fibre transmitter using a coupled laser which can do tens of miles. Polishing the end of the fibre can help a lot, but they can be very susceptible to microphonic noise - if it's knocked or moved, as this can be enough to cause momentary dropouts. HDMI over fibre will depend upon the system you buy. We used to use pro systems that would do about m without issue, but the shorter length systems are also pretty good, with sealed optics keeping things stable.

Talk to Joe Fernand about his Cat5 options or consider a streamer and play the files via the network. Jamie Distinguished Member. I'll concur with Joe, I've got a 10m optical that works for me however while it's been trouble free for my Cambridge Audio CD player I've tried some other devices that didn't work reliably which makes me think 24m would be problematic. Personally I'd probably build or buy some sort of network streamer. Ok guys, so I think I'll just pick up some sort of network streaming device, how does that work?

Only have a 1TB drive inside my PC so it wont fit my tunes on it. Depends what you buy and what other equipment you already have. Before I got Lazy and just use Spotify and other online streaming services, I had a gb drive with all my music on it. Anything longer than that is susceptible to errors due to internal reflections. Fiber optic cable runs for miles without problems. I guess I don't understand why an optical cable would be any different.

I am quite wary of that myself, but I have not the experience necessary to make the call. I was reading about Toslink limitations and apparently 20 feet is the effective length without any significant data degradation. I do not know if that applies to data stream for telecommunications or if it applies to digital audio as well. I retrieved the information from bicsi. Too Many DBs Post Number: Registered: Dec Posted on Friday, January 26, - GMT I think the reason they can carry for miles is that the telephone company uses a balanced system compared to consumer cables.

They also use ultra-pure glass.