Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions how to connect optical toslink cable?

ok, ok I'm a newbie but just got a DVD player and want to connect it to my receiver with an optical tsolink cable. What's the trick...I don't want to damage this expensive cable so I'm asking is there a trick or do you just shove the connector in?

On the tiny male end of the cable there will be a small rubber cover. Its hard to tell its even there and its sometimes hard to pull off (I use my fingernails). Then, you'll pull out the plug from the female port on the DVD player.

Be sure to keep both the plug and cover in case you need to put them back (you don't want dust or smudges on the ends or ports).

You'll have to orient the plug to the port based on its shape. Then, just push it in. Oddly, it probably will not feel all that secure (i.e. it will pull out easily if you are't careful so don't tug on it too much afterwards), at least not as secure as a RCA or Coax type plug.

Wow, now you're a hero! I never would have seen the clear plastic covers! Thanks much.

I'm curious. I have both hookups options available but went with the upgraded (more expensive) monster cables not the optical. Is there a noticible difference between the two?

The price.

They're both digital connections. So long as a one and a zero don't look like one another and the timing doesn't get screwed up, there shouldn't be a difference.

But what about digital jitter??

First, there's no such thing as "digital jitter". There's just jitter. Jitter is variations over time between the resultant signals in a system. And, just as I said, so long as the jitter doesn't result in a zero looking like a one and vice versa or the timing being off by a full period, the receiver will compensate. That's the whole point of using digital systems when transfering and communicating data. Transmitting a piece of data in digital form takes 8x the bandwidth as analog. However, when you only have two states, there's not a lot of possible error.

In order for a digital transmission to result in a missed bit based on jitter, you need half the period of the signal's worth of jitter. If you've got that much error, you have bigger problems than TOSLINK v. Coaxial.

More info on clock management from one of our app notes:
http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/TND301-D.PDF

Incidentally, no one even thinks about jitter in the design world until they're over 500MHz.

Thanks for the clear explanation. Before I made the previous post, I was going through a draft of a post containing the gist of what you said (digital = a stream of either 1s or 0s). I couldn't get the wording right, so I gave up. (Yes, I DO censor myself sometimes. )

During the research for my lost post, I came across a website for a cable company that described their digital cables as being very faithful to the "leading edge of the digital waveform" -- which results in fewer errors seen at the receiving end of the stream. All I could think to say about that was "< cough > bullsh**!"

I guess I'd better replace all the copper cables on the inside of my computer with silver-coated, time-aligned, anti-jitter cables. Lord knows how much data is being lost to the ether with my cheap OEM cables!

OK, Now I am curious!
The optical TOSLINK is for audio only right?
And just when I thought I had it all straight!
I am now confused with all the cables. (coaxial, composite, S-video, componet, DVI, RCA(red&white), optical toslink) did I leave any out?

My understanding is: (correct me if I am wrong)

coaxial.....................as good as composit??..................video & audio

composite.................poor quality................................video

S-video....................better quality than composite.........video

component................better quality than S-video............video

DVI..........................Best quality.................................video??

RCA(red & white)........good quality................................audio

Optical TOSLINK.........better than standard RCA??............audio


I describe what cable, the quality, and what signal it caries. "??" indicate I am realy not sure!

Is this correct?

What determines if a cable is digital or analog? Are all cables digital? Is it the source, that sends the signal to the cable, that determines if it is digital? My coaxial cable caries the audio and video signal into my house from my cable company or satalite dish, in either digital or analog, depending on my subsciption, right?

UUUUUUGGGGG my head hurts!

can anybody help clear things up?