Video Asylum

Posted by budge (D) on August 30, 2008 at 04:41:26

In Reply to: RE: Audio Outputs posted by Ron B on August 29, 2008 at 22:42:51

Optical output relies on transducers to convert electrical energy into light and vice versa at the receiving end. Great in theory but the quality of the transducers used in our audio/video gear leaves a lot to be desired at both the send and receive side of the equation. Implementing high quality optical transducers is simply cost prohibitive whether we're talking an $89 DVD player, $30K Esoteric player or a $10K processor.
The only situation where we use optical connections is when a client has a cable box as part of their AV system and ground loop issues are present. Using a toslink cable from cable box to AVR/processor will usually eliminate the ground loop issue.
A well designed, shielded coax/digital cable via SPDIF will sonically outperform any optical connection via Toslink despite the fact RCA connectors are essentially not true 75ohm impedance.