taking advantage of digital audio out

[yaemes]

i have a 2008 macbook pro and i know it does digital audio with the headphone port. (sometimes the led comes on accidentally) and i also have an ipod hi-fi. so what kind of cable do i need to connect them?

 

[TheProfessor]

This is similar to what I want to know.

I am in the process of building my Mini based home media center and I want to get digital audio into my HK receiver, but I'm not sure what cable to use.
A standard "optical" cable doesn't look right, but I can't seem to find anything that DOES..

Any help out there guys?

 

[Drumjim85]

fiber cables have many different ends ... you need one that that is long and skinny like a 1/8" jack.

 

[yaemes]

thanks for the pic! i can't find headphone jack-sized fiber optic cables anywhere, where'd you get that?

 

[Vader]

the skinny optical is called a "mini toslink" the regular end (that goes in most surround systems is just toslink)

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

If you have anything that uses TOSlink then one of these should work.

http://www.amazon.com/6ft-Toslink-M...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1228456547&sr=8-1

 

[Drumjim85]

thanks for the pic! i can't find headphone jack-sized fiber optic cables anywhere, where'd you get that?

i had it custom built

http://www.procablesnsound.com

Great people, Great prices, Great quality.

 

[xparaparafreakx]

Some come with the adaptor to convert the box end you usually see to the headphone size optical. I bought my many years ago and I though all were like that.

 

[yaemes]

if anyone's curious...

http://www.amazon.com/Mini-Toslink-...UTF8&coliid=I2ZLYDYL5J198A&colid=QWA5ZBOEPXXJ

or

http://www.topmicrousa.com/opmitoopmito.html

i think im going to get a cable for christmas so ill share the results then. and i think its important to know that every toslink cable is totally identical. since its digital theres either 0% signal degradation or 100% signal degradation. it either works or it doesn't work. eg paying a higher price to get a "better" cable is pointless, since all toslink is the same, except for actual mechanical durability.

 

[FX120]

i have a 2008 macbook pro and i know it does digital audio with the headphone port. (sometimes the led comes on accidentally) and i also have an ipod hi-fi. so what kind of cable do i need to connect them?

I don't believe the Hi-fi has digital audio in, and if it does it would be in the form of a coaxial digital input, not optical in which case you would need to get a SPDIF converter, the cheapest one I have found was priced at $80...

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

To be annoying here - quality WOULD be an issue with Toslink - if running multiple splits, or long distances. As higher quality fibers (ones that use actual glass, for example) will carry better than cheap-o's.

BUT - unless you talking 25 foot + cables, this is 100% non issue.

That's what I can't understand why people think 200 dollar HDMI cables are always better than 7 dollar ones. Same thing, digital is 1 or 0.

Eh.

Also, FYI, you have a mini-toslink to mini-toslink. Most receivers take standard (square shaped) toslink in - so be sure to check the receiver before ordering that cable. The one I linked is (above) is what's going from my iMac to my Z-5500.

 

[drichards]

The toslink cable that the apple store sells (from xtreme mac) has a mini adapter for the macbook pro. I have mine hooked up to my 5.1 like that.

 

[Drumjim85]

i think im going to get a cable for christmas so ill share the results then. and i think its important to know that every toslink cable is totally identical. since its digital theres either 0% signal degradation or 100% signal degradation. it either works or it doesn't work. eg paying a higher price to get a "better" cable is pointless, since all toslink is the same, except for actual mechanical durability.

not exactly true. but it's less of a distinction than with analog.

 

[FX120]

To be annoying here - quality WOULD be an issue with Toslink - if running multiple splits, or long distances. As higher quality fibers (ones that use actual glass, for example) will carry better than cheap-o's.

BUT - unless you talking 25 foot + cables, this is 100% non issue.

That's what I can't understand why people think 200 dollar HDMI cables are always better than 7 dollar ones. Same thing, digital is 1 or 0.

You would think so, but even digital signals suffer from signal degridation and cable losses.
The best example is CD audio, where even though the signaling is digital there will almost always be data "lost" through the process of reading the data off the disc, and circuitry built into the CD player will try and compensate for the loss, it is known as error correction.

Same thing with Ethernet, have you ever heard of "dropped packets", caused by a cable run that is either too long or suffering from some other interference? The run might work, but it will suffer from poor performance.

So yes, digital signals do suffer from cable issues. What you've got to ask yourself is whether or not you will notice the losses enough to care. TOSLINK is such a comparativley simple optical protocol (LED, simple modulation, slow clock rate) that you could argue that there is not a real need for things like glass fiber and finely polished ends, things that are critical when it comes to higher data rate multimode fiber runs for data.

I will agree that for 95% of the consumers out there the $7 HDMI cables and $5 TOSLINK cables are perfectly fine for their intended applications.

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

But that's why god invented parity checks.