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to be fair TOSLINK was a particularly bad standard and offers lower audio quality to similar or cheaper analogue devices. It's whole selling point was basically
by ender341341 3y ago
to be fair TOSLINK was a particularly bad standard and offers lower audio quality to similar or cheaper analogue devices. It's whole selling point was basically "it's fiber optic so that makes it better" while not actually being better.
- yummypaint 3y agoIt's literally the exact same digital signal sent over copper S/PDIF. The only meaningful advantage it offers is electrical isolation.
- xnzakg 3y agoDidn't stop manufacturers from making gold plated TOSLINK connectors though.
- pdpi 3y agoI wish I could dismiss that as a joke, but I have in fact seen some of those.
- pdntspa 3y agoIt fools the same people who somehow think toslink audio quality is worse over a bitperfect link
- ender341341 3y agoNo one's saying it didn't transmit the data bit perfect, but it re-encoded the media at a relatively low bitrate with a decently crappy codec which is where the crappy audio came from. EDIT: Looking closer at the wiki (it's been forever since I saw it used), it's when it's being used for surround sound that it compresses it super poorly, for stereo it's just PCM and sounds fine.
- ender341341 3y agoS/PDIF is also crappy in comparison to analogue audio of the time. EDIT: Looking closer at the wiki (it's been forever since I saw it used), it's when it's being used for surround sound that it compresses it super poorly, for stereo it's just PCM and sounds fine.
- RF_Savage 3y agoNo ground loops is a feature.
- atoav 3y agoLower audio quality? Nope. Toslink sends the actual bits that make up you audio digitally over the cable. If the receiving device does a shit job at converting the signal to analog, this is barely the fault of the standard.
- ender341341 3y agoThe codec they transmitted over the wire (regardless of the wire media) was crappy, not the wire itself, but in this case those imply the same thing as as far as I'm aware there was only the one format that it'd transmit over that connector.
- neckro23 3y agoWhat codec? It's PCM. You could also use that PCM stream to transmit Dolby Digital or DTS, but that's up to the device, not TOSLINK.
- ender341341 3y agookay, looking closer at the wiki (it's been forever since I actually tried it), for stereo it's full bandwidth, it's when it's surround sound it's super compressed.
- atoav 3y agoSuper compressed compared to what? Bluetooth?
- ender341341 3y agoCompared to pretty much any other output you'd have on an av receiver 15/20ish years ago (so hdmi, XLR, or some other standard analogue like rca or speaker wire). Possibly similar to the compression level of blutooth, don't have access to any systems that'd be easy to compare against these days for toslink.
- conradfr 3y agoIt's still used to link audio interfaces with ADAT.