Comments by "Perhaps" (@NoEgg4u) on "TOSLINK: That one consumer fiber optic standard" video.

  1. @1:01 "We just haven't seemed to find a place for fiber optics, aside from piping it into your home or business". Data centers use loads of fiber for connecting servers to external, local storage (such as, for example, EMC's VMAX). @12:05 "Good luck avoiding the building's electrical wiring, they're eventually gonna share." Products from companies such as Shunyata Research and Audioquest clean up the power. If you do an A/B test, using no upgraded power related cables or equipment, and compare it to replacing the power cords and using their line conditioners, you will hear a difference -- and it is not subtle. Do not perform this test with any of the equipment you have in this video. It is not capable of throwing a wide, tall, deep, and realistic soundstage. It does not reveal the space between the instruments. It does not reveal black backgrounds. It never sounds like the singers are really in the room with you. Rather, it always sounds like a reproduction. But with high-end, matched, and professionally set-up audio equipment, you will hear all of the above, and you will benefit from cleaner power, derived from products from Shunyata and Audioquest. How does that happen? I do not build the stuff. I just listen to it. There is a difference, and it is not wishful thinking.
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  2. Fiber optic cables provide galvanic isolation that RCA cables do not -- and it matters. Why? The host of this video correctly states that either the digital data gets there or it does not. That is true. But as our courts say when you take the witness stand "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" In this case, we heard the truth, but not the whole truth. Line nose that travels through RCA cables will accompany the digital signal into the DAC. That line noise will be picked up by the analog section of the DAC. Yes, CD players have an analog section. CD players create sound from scratch. They create sound from reading the zeros and ones and making it into an analog sound that eventually makes it to your speakers. So RCA cables (especially crappy ones) are a conduit for electrical noise that breach your CD player's (your DAC's) internal components. And line noise is bad for sound reproduction. You might be thinking "I hear no line noise". Well, if you took steps to eliminate the line noise, you would notice an improvement in sound quality. The music would reveal inky black backgrounds. There is low-fi stereo equipment. There is mid-fi stereo equipment. There is high-fi stereo equipment. Each of the above has tiers. All of the equipment that the host used in this video is "low-fi", and the lower end of low-fi. That is why, to his ear, cables make no difference. The equipment he is using is equivalent to the testing equipment used in a lab. If the lab is using equipment that is not suited to the test at hand, you will not obtain meaningful test results. Such is the case when this host compares poor cables using poor equipment.
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