Optical Toslink Question

[rain27 10+ year member]

Forgive me for being new to this..Can someone please explain what optical connections are for? Are these solely for connecting head units to cd changers, sound processors, etc.? Optical cannot take the place of rca speaker connections I assume?

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[Horsemanwill 10+ year member]

it can if the amp is set up for it.

 

[Ctesibius 10+ year member]

Can someone please explain what optical connections are for?

Digital signals are impervious to induced noise, so digital signal transfer (optical or digital coaxial) allows the audio signal to be transferred through a noisy environment (like your car) without picking up any noise in the process.

Are these solely for connecting head units to cd changers, sound processors, etc.? Optical cannot take the place of rca speaker connections I assume?

Well, they can replace the RCA wires in a system where the amplifier can accept a digital signal directly. In car audio, however, there are only a handful of amplifiers that can do so. So in reality, yes, the optical (or coaxial) digital signal is used to transfer the audio signal between the headunits, cd changers, processors, etc and regular RCA's would be needed to send the signal to the amplifiers.

Pioneers ODR system allows for direct connection of a digital signal to the amplifiers, and the Phoenix Gold Octane R5.1MT also accepted Toslink input (because it had built-in 5.1 decoding). But those are the only car audio amps I know of off hand that accept digital input.

 

[Horsemanwill 10+ year member]

Audison has some i know the Thesis is one.