Is there ANY difference in quality of optical cables?
emartin
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Can anybody credibly explain how optical cables differ in quality?
I am specifically refering to connecting CD/DVD player with an amplifier. However I think about it, it is only a stream of 0 and I that gets transferred. Even a simple data cable will do just as much as any optical link. Otherwise computer networks would lose data - any single bit of information can be critical to a program running. Such networks would have to be shielded, made of extremely pure glass wires or God knows what to prevent this.
There is a difference in the quality of the fiber itself I know. Depending on how good the quality the fiber is determines how much signal loss occurs due to bends in the cable and the light having to go around corners. With a cheaper piece of fiber data gets lost around curves and signal loss occurs.
Anonymous
Posted on
Unless you have a very long cable, for peace of mind, just by any cheapest brand name optical cable. All optical cables should provide the same result if they conform to the spec.
I don't know about AV but for data communication, error checking algorithm is designed to ensure data sent is equal to data received or the packet (connection of 0/1) will be rejected and resubmit. AV equipment will have higher tolerance for error rate but unless you have high-end units otherwise the small % of error probably won't make a difference.