Let's look at TOSLINK!

What CGI?

Daniel Pritchard

I really dislike the stock footage! It does not add any value and is in stark contrast to your unique style and visuals. I especially hate the usage of CGI here, because you usually don't use such graphics anywhere else, which I'd say is a trademark of yours. I'd rather have more talking head.

Christian Schulz

It's amazing how many people don't realize that the 3.5,, audio jacks (headphone/mic) on most MacBooks and iMacs from that era were actually optical ports as well. I was always perplexed when I read the documentation and saw DD5.1 mentioned but couldn't figure out how that came from a headphone jack until I.... saw the light.

My Creative digital speakers have TOSLINK from my (now ancient but still fantastic) Audigy PC sound card. Really unnecessary, but... shiny!

legraf

Using TOSLINK in an industrial capacity, where it neither generates nor is impacted by electrical noise, actually makes more sense than in the home.

Wolf

Apple used toslink from 2006 all the way to 2016

Martin Embeh

You wondered in your video about the keying. There is a full duplex version of the standard, JIS F07 that is basically two JIS F05 (Toslink) connectors side by side. One use I've seen in the wild is for industrial machinery by FANUC. They use it for their optical serial bus. Look up FANUC FSSB cables. Also, here is a handy dandy datasheet of the various connectors from Toshiba: https://media.digikey.com/pdf/data%20sheets/toshiba%20pdfs/fiber-optic%20devices%20toslink.pdf

I'm not sure if this will get me into any trouble with any 4-letter music industry associations, but me and my friends (all 3 of them) at school used to spend hours and hours in the library 'listening' to music in the audio rooms... What we were actually doing is making those bit-perfect copies of music you mentioned in the video onto our portable minidisc recorders, by using--you guessed it--mini Toslink! Oh it was amazing, and I do look back on those days quite fondly... I still contend that Minidisc is the perfect portable optical medium for "normal people" who wanted to listen to music on the go, and I will go down with the ship on this matter... Anyway, thanks for the video and I will be sad when I no longer see the tiny red light coming out of a house-shaped square on the back of consumer audio/visual equipment...

TOSLINK also provides a handy way to connect two circuits together that need to be electrically isolated; I've seen it used between PCBs with different power supplies to establish a serial connection that you'd normally implement using RS-232.

Apple used mini optical / mini toslink on just about all of the intel macs from the first ones in 2006? up to maybe the retina display macbook pros in 2012. Back in the day I got one of these: https://www.soundandvision.com/content/jvc-su-dh1-headphone-surround-adapter which also use exclusively mini optical input. it had an analog input too, but it physically separate cable and the mini optical input jack was digital only.

adcurtin

Great. And now that screenshot has made my realise that my LED is slightly off-centre. Let's just pretend nobody saw that. :p

ElectronAsh

Fun fact, today I was doing more work on a PCB design which essentially has mini-TOSLINK on it... https://i.imgur.com/OzfsKTp.png It's a JAMMA adapter for the MiSTer project. The newer versions of the "IO Board" also have an LED sat behind the 3.5mm jack... https://i.imgur.com/W30YQ9l.jpg

ElectronAsh

I love the "gold plated" TOSLINK cables. It makes a better connection, and sounds silky-smooth compared to coax, and... oh.... oh yeah. lol

ElectronAsh

That T-shirt is the niche-est Epcot reference you may see. Perfectly the text under it is hidden by the table, making it even more obscure. It is an image of a worker on an oil rig from the mural in the loading area of the now defunct Maelstrom attraction.

Technology Connections

It’s possibly heading for audiophile but I’d always understood the advantage of fibre optic interlinks as avoiding ground (earth) loops (ie, additional earth return paths between equipment), so you could be sure everything went back to the (switchboard) star ground. That’s not because it affects the digital signal, but because it could mean current flow via unexpected paths that then might get into the analogue stages. Ewen

Ewen McNeill

TOSLINK is guaranteed to be galvanically isolated. In the golden age of consumer HiFi ground loop issues were common and difficult to debug. Toshiba wanted a consumer standard for isolated physical connection Primarily for this reason and also to differentiate their own SPDIF ICs in the supply chain.

John Laur

I hope Thunderbolt is part of the next video, which was originally slated to be optical, but wound up doing ell enough over copper that they _mostly_ scrapped the optical standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)#Copper_vs._optical

Rufo Sanchez

Potential spoilers, look awaaaaaaaaaaay -- is fiber optic HDMI slated for the upcoming video? It's not a standard per se, but it's common enough in the professional field of conference room A/V installations, and is arguably priced (and definitely available) for consumer/prosumer usage.

Travis Snoozy

This was a real eyeopener for me. Great work as usual, but this one had my attention a bit more than normal. Perhaps it's because I still use TOSLINK for my Sonos Playbar or maybe it's because it was such a mysterious connector back in my teenage years. I don't know, but I really enjoyed this one. Thanks a lot! :D

the issue with having electrical connections between different equipment isn't in the connection itself, but in the fact that there are multiple connections (allowing a loop to form). The wall wiring isn't an issue as long as it's the ONLY place where the earths meet.

Great video, Alec. I have one of the first few MZ-1 Minidisc players and used mini-optical connectors since the early 90’s. They even created a tiny adaptor now to allow you to convert a regular TOSLink cable to a mini one. Love the comment about gold plated Optical connectors :) BTW if you want to see an example of an extreme version of this (this was just to connect a Denon DVD player or CD Player to a receiver) - https://www.hifix.co.uk/denon-akdl1-ultra-premium-denon-link-cable

Mark Wayt

the content is of course awesome, but i have to note that the brightness of the wikipedia shots is very jarring compared to the modest levels of the rest of the video.

nobody

I laughed pretty hard at "make the LEDs go blinky-blinky go faster"

Joey Kendrick

One of the best intro's I've seen, loved it! How you explained the issue and tied it in so beautifully

Insider Chad

Exactly! This is the kind of thing I subscribe for

Yagsti

you know when a standard is designed well that it last the test of time

Paul Fisher

All MacBook pros prior to 2015 have mini toslink audio out.

Jacob Nelson

I am glad you referenced ADAT Lightpipe. That technology allowed me to upgrade my recording studio from a tape-based (ADAT) recording system to a disk-based (Cubase/Nuendo) system about 20 years ago, and at the time IT WAS PHENOMENAL!

You simply must explain what your T-shirt represents. I admit to being somewhat of an out-of-touch old codger, so at least a hint would be appreciated. Image search for "Manstrong" only brought up beefcake construction worker photos or the character from the Venture Brothers cartoon.

Mark Hesse

The Stock Footage lifts the start considerably. Well-chosen clips that are relevant to the script. Well done. :-)

Stephen Bell

Watching that over a TOSLINK connection between my PC and amp... was using coax SPDIF on my previous PC but this motherboard's only digital output is optical. Other than that the only thing TOSLINK has for it is... providing a 2nd digital input to amps that usually only have one coax input 🤔 Noticed mini-TOSLINK way back in the day of the first MD recorders from that "optical in" marking, every MD recorder had one AFAIK. Never used it though...

Kilrah

Mini-TOSLINK was pretty common I think, my father's portable DCC recorder from the mid of the 90's already had it, so my portable MiniDisc. I also still use TOSLINK to connect various equipment to my home cinema receiver, except for my (Philips) TV: it only has S/PDIF. And there, the sensitivity has one tiny disadvantage: if there is a thunderstorm going on outside, there may be brief interruptions in the audio with every lightning, that problem does TOSLINK not have. And sometimes when switching a light this also happens...

MrHammond

I enjoy the use of stock footage here, especially in the intro. The intro on this one felt like very like the late-80s/early-90s PBS educational content I've always felt you aim for. It was a really great video overall, too. I actually only recently started using TOSLink when I got a soundbar. For whatever reason, it's the easiest way to make the whole set-up work with the equipment I have.

Kevin Kostka

“Handy Dandy Movie Interface” I DIED!! Lmao!

Patrick Bianchi

Stock footage, when used well, and when it fits well with your own style, can be nice. I still appreciate plenty of footage of your talking head talking, but I think some b-roll is not a bad enhancement. It breaks it up and adds visual interest. Nice job.

Daniel Pritchard

btw, I use a Mini TOSLINK cable with my Chromecast Audio also, since the standard analog cable made an annoying hum.

Asaf Sagi

Awesome video! Regarding stock footage - you do you, man. It doesn't take away anything from the quality of the videos. I LOLed at the HD-DVD B-roll shot and even more so at the gold plated optical cables. I was like WHAAAAAT

Asaf Sagi

Great video, but I would rather see your Bgroll than stock footage. Actually I would rather see you eating a banana than stock footage. It is too unpersonal. Better spend your money on booze.

Simon Mikkelsen

Great video. Haven’t used TOSLINK in ages. I remember switching to it back in the day to avoid ground loops(?) which were causing hum in our home theater system over SPDIF coax

kalleboo

the abstract concept stock footage always bugs me when i see it in stuff, mostly because i used to make that kind of crap lol. i think though it adds some nice flair to the video.

Kajico

I think Apple had digital optical out on a good number of machines; but, stopped including it on newer machines: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202730 Back in 1996 or 1997, I jumped on the MiniDisc bandwagon and found a Discman that had mini-TOSLINK output so that I could create mix MDs digitally

Linh Pham

this is what i whip out when people tell me you can't bend fibre. or that it's made out of glass. or other STUPID suggestions. i mean, yeah, this is plastic and limited to like 3-8 mbps on a good day but I don't let that stop me.

Biking With Panda

OH MY GOD THIS IS SO UNEXPECTED YET I LOVE IT (first btw)