Computer Audio Asylum

RE: Toslink chain - kind request of advice

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This Post Has Been Edited by the Author

In Reply to: RE: Toslink chain - kind request of advice posted by beppe61 on February 16, 2013 at 12:16:15

I'm using Toslink links and it's better then all the SPDIF ports I tried.
Though it took me some effort to get there.
No question, Toslink generates ususally quite high jitter.
One reason for excessive losses though is that most manufacturers implement it poorly. They don't even follow implementation instructions.
E.g. my SB Touch didn't have any filtering or decoupling on the transmitter. Toshiba clearly outlines how important this would be.
I changed that and experienced quite a surprise. The same I had to do on the receiving end. No wonder that many people rate Toslink pretty low.

Spdif coax is not flawless either. I e.g. tried all kind of pulsetransformers. They all did something else.

What matters is a proper implementation.
Most of the SPDIF receiver chips claim to be able to cope with the incoming jitter and or noise if it remains under a certain threshold. You don't need pico second jitter on the input.
As long as the signal is lockable, e.g. Wolfson claims to get you 50ps jitter out on the WM8805, the other manfacturers Cirrus etc. claim similar figures. They don't say what interface (coax,toslink) they're talking about.
Plastic fiber come with much higher losses then glass. I've been using Silfex which was better then my Optcoupler MK II.
However. I just tried a Mutec 20inch @ 6.99 pro-audio plastic fibre. I'm pretty surprised how well that one performs. (Try to avoid bending the fibre as much as possible and keep plastic as short as possible.)
Toslink is by far the cheapest way to get you isolated. And in my case I even prefer it over coax.
My two cents.
Cheers

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Edits: 02/17/13

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