Toslink - Glass vs Plastic

I listen to lossless files from an iMac to a Channel Islands VDA-2 DAC and from there to a Channel Islands VHP-2 headphone amp and a Marantz 2250B refurbed by Classic Audio. I listen via AKG-701, Grado 325i, and Legacy Classic speakers. I currently use a plastic toslink cable. Will I hear an improvement going to a glass toslink cable. The cable is 1.5 meters.

Thanks

 

We use to have a member that posted here regularly by the name of MaxxWire that swore by plastic TOSLINK, (or was it glass).

 

TOSLINK is digital, so no.

 

Doesn't matter, as long as the cable is durable and has a good connection. Both are overkill for the app in various specs.

This has been studied by R&D in our company, who invented practical fiber optic.

We don't make Toslink cable, so this is unbiased.

 

Try it and report back.

Do some research first, to see if anyone else has an opinion on manufacturers.

 

Your company listened to plastic and then glass optical cables on quality hifi gear and concluded that there is no difference?

 

Someone here, sometime back said nowadays there is no difference. There was a time glass was better, but today's plastic Toslink is better. It had much to do with the termination and the quality of the polishing of the end of the plastic optic.

 

This is the exact reason that I wrote my earlier post the way that I did, it was purposefully ambiguous.

 

Just my subjective experience, but I run a WireWorld glass toslink out of my macbook and found it to be much better than the plastic one I used before. The improvement was so significant that I never saw a reason to even try the plastic cable again. However, out of curiosity I just dug it out of the drawer and put it back into the system. It stayed for two minutes as the sound became noticeably compressed and hazy, lost air and decay and in general just wasn't very engaging to listen to. The cable technically works and it did produce music but the changes weren't subtle to me. Granted this was a cheap no-name toslink cable, so better plastic toslinks may be much better. Might be worth trying to see if it makes a difference for you.

 

And then I know people who pooh-pooh optical connectors and insist on coax. And then I run into engineers who insist that AES/EBU balanced digital connections are better than consumer unbalanced S/PDIF. This is not a simple argument.

 

I used to think there was no difference betweeen optical TOSLINK "interconnects", but there is. I use, believe it or not, the Monster M-1000 TOSLINK cable and I was very surprised to find how much better it sounded than the Audioquest or Belkin TGOSLINK optical cables I was using prior. I don't think much of Monster's audio cables, but my experience with their M-1000 HDMI and optical cables is that I think they are excellent, especially for the price.

 

Maybe the OP will have to try one and see what he hears, given the responses.
Any dealer, if there's one nearby, should let him audition.
Or, there's a company, I think called The Cable Company, that sells new & used cable, that may arrange an audition.

Bottom line, it looks like auditioning is the only way to find out. My preference is coax, if that's an option. And I agree with those who think AES/EBU balanced might be better, as well as FireWire if supported.

And running two cables, one for the clock and the other for the data appears to be even better.

 

No, we analyzed the waveforms, dispersion, coherence, phasing, etc. and found that it was the way beyond what is needed to carry the digital signal in sync for analog reproduction. Not even close to being a factor.

Input analog signal matters more.

 

Very interesting. From what I have found, it's like everything else; some say big difference others say none at all. Think I'll get a glass cable and compare.

 

only way to be satisfied, IMO

for a reasonably cheap experiment, try the one from ebay - search for "glass toslink" there's a 2m piece that goes for $24. If it works for you, you may then want to explore more expensive options, but this one worked fine for me

 

My experience echoes this

 

As long as the cable is short and the connections clean(vital) there is no difference.

 

kstaken's experience rather reads as if there was something wrong with the cable, or a compatibility problem.

 

I have never seen an objective analysis that indicates any possible difference.

 

I don't think the cable is "broken", I just interpret this as the sound of exacerbated jitter on a notoriously jitter prone interface. In fact if you didn't know any better you might even think it sounds good, especially since USB out of the computer into the same DAC sounds even worse than the plastic toslink. These all play perfectly "fine", it's just some play more "fine" than others.

I'm sure there's still lots of jitter going on with the glass toslink too it's just not as bad. If the macbook had a coax digital output that might be better still. I'm looking forward to trying one of the new USB -> coax converters that are becoming pretty common.

BTW, when I first started playing with this I definitely thought there is absolutely no way digital cables matter. This is why I bought the cheap plastic toslink in the first place. Once I realized that the protocol used here (in simple terms) is a streaming one with no error correction and with timing as a critical element, then I could start to see that yes the cable might actually matter and decided to try another one. Even then it really surprised me how much of a difference it made.

BTW, the DAC here is a PS Audio DL III.

 

This is also based on "research", or actual listening?

 

Its based on science dear boy.

 

This.

I remember hearing a A/B test on one of those Chesky Records demonstration discs with three different TOSLINK cables in the signal chain at various price points.

At any rate, there was a not so subtle improvement in sound going from the cheapie to the mid range one, and a smaller bump in quality going to the "high end" cable.

It really isn't as simple as "bits is bits" which gets thrown around a lot.

 

Well I see Blue Jeans Cable recommends plastic over glass for audio use. They seem to be fairly respected around here. Still undecided on the need for glass. Maybe I need to upgrade to a premium plastic. I currently use a Monoprice cable.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/store/digital-audio/