Stop Using Optical Cables (Toslink) For Home Theater!!

what's up guys it's chris majestic and one topic that seems to confuse a ton of people including people who are really familiar with home theater is optical cables for home theater audio now i've been called an idiot and had people fuss me out in the comments section so today we're going to put the questions to rest once and for all so you can stop using optical cables [Music] today's video is sponsored by keeps so if you didn't already know two out of three guys will experience some form of male pattern baldness by the time they're 35 now i personally know this to be true because with me being in my 30s i can easily say that more than half of my friends are rocking a ball head right now for this exact reason well prevention is key and keeps is a subscription service that focuses on making it easier and more affordable for men to treat their baldness since it's best to do something about your hair loss while you still have hair left so when you sign up for the service a licensed doctor will review your information online and recommend a specific hair loss treatment plan for you and the treatments get shipped directly to your door every three months so if you're ready to do something about your hair loss go to keeps.com forward slash chris majestic or click the link in the video description i want to thank keeps responsible in today's video and let's jump back into it so optical audio cables also referred to as toslink cables are fiber optic cables that date all the way back to the 1980s and for a long time they were one of the best ways to send audio between your receivers and other consumer grade audio equipment so toslink uses light to transmit audio signals using fiber optics this makes them immune to common electrical issues like interference or ground loops which are common with copper cables and toslink has two common types of connectors you have the standard connector which is the one most people are familiar with and then you have mini toslink now i had honestly never heard of mini toslink until i got a chromecast audio a few years ago and it's actually pretty cool even though google foolishly discontinued it so even though this looks like a standard headphone jack it can either accept a basic 3.5 millimeter stereo cable or it can accept a mini toslink cable which allows you to send music from your chromecast audio to your speakers without any interference which is pretty cool so when we say toslink we're really referring to the physical cable itself but the interface that the toslink cable uses is known as spdif or spdif now you may see this printed on either a toslink port or a coaxial port since both of these types of cables support it now i'm not going to go too much in the coaxial cables but the quick and dirty explanation of coax is that it uses an rca cable to send the signal but since it's not using fiber optics it's not immune to interference like toslink but aside from those physical characteristics they both use spdif to send pcm audio and they basically do the exact same thing so the places you've probably seen toslink is on the back of your tv on a soundbar or home theater receiver and the reason we still see tosnick in modern devices is because it's still one of the simplest and easiest ways to connect home theater audio equipment okay so if toslink is so good and so popular then why am i saying you should stop using it well up until a few years ago toslink was king but it does have a few flaws the first issue is that these cables are not very flexible since fiber optic cables can be pretty fragile and can be permanently damaged if bent too hard this makes them less ideal for things like tight in-wall installations or installations that require sharp bends but the biggest limitation of toslink is that it doesn't support the bandwidth required to send lossless audio for more than two channels which is obviously a problem if you have more than two speakers in your home theater now this doesn't mean you can't send surround sound using toslink it just means that it'll compress the signal since it can't handle lossless or uncompressed surround sound this means you'll never get high fidelity surround sound from a toslink or coax cable okay so if that's the case then how do you send high quality or lossless surround sound like dolby atmos to your soundbar or speakers well believe it or not the best audio connection for home theater is hdmi now i've talked about this in multiple videos but hdmi is better than optical in nearly every way not only does hdmi send high resolution video to your tv but it also supports all of the latest audio formats including all of the older formats so what does this all mean well with so many people going out and buying high-end sound bars that support dolby atmos or other advanced audio formats i'm seeing a lot of people connect them using an optical connection now even though optical is fine it does defeat the purpose of you buying a more expensive soundbar or receiver since you can't use optical for dolby atmos in other words if you want your money's worth you have to use hdmi okay so what does this mean if you're using an optical cable now well the first thing to do is make sure that your soundbar or receiver doesn't have hdmi if it doesn't then optical or toslink is probably the best connection that it supports and this might not be a big deal if you're using an inexpensive sound bar since it may only have a couple of speakers anyway and it might not benefit much from lossless audio and if your soundbar or receiver does have toslink and you're using a basic aux or stereo connection then i'd recommend upgrading to toslink since it's definitely better than a stereo connection and if your system does have an hdmi input or arc port then i highly suggest switching over to hdmi to improve your audio especially if it's a high-end soundbar or receiver and if the hdmi on it supports hdmi cec or arc then you get even more benefits and if you're not familiar with arc or hdmi cec i just recently did a video on that so i'll throw a card up here for you to check it out and i'll also put a link in the video description so even though hdmi is the best connection to use for home theater audio does that mean you just grab an hdmi cable plug it in and you're all set well it's not quite that simple for every situation but it will give you the best possible audio quality when it comes to home theater audio not to be confused with high fidelity stereo setups which is a whole different ball game now hdmi can be pretty complicated since it does so much and the standards change all the time so if you find it to be too complicated or you have issues with hdmi it is okay to use toslink but my goal of this video is to help people understand that toslink is inferior to hdmi now considering how complicated hdmi is i have done several videos explaining things so make sure you check out the links in the video description for a few videos where i go over the details on how to set all this stuff up but hopefully you guys found this video helpful if you did go ahead and make sure you mash that like button for me and if you did learn something in this video go ahead and post in the comments section and let me know if i helped you out also don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and make sure you hit that bell icon so you get notified whenever i post new videos thanks for watching guys and i'll see you in the next video

Channel: Chris Majestic

Views: 621,141

Keywords: majestechs, chris majestic, optical, optical cables, toslink, optical audio cable, hdmi, spdif, home theater, home theater audio, dolby atmos, soundbar, how to connect a soundbar, sound bar, home theater setup, best soundbar, home cinema, total harmonic distortion, thd, sonos beam, bose, klipsch, atmos, samsung, sony, samsung q90r, sonos, sonos beam gen 2, sonos arc, what is thd, sonos soundbar, hdmi arc, surround sound, sonos beam review, beam gen 2, bose soundbar 900, sonos beam 2

Id: LdCjYad4V68

Length: 6min 46sec (406 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 08 2021