Optical Cable Vs Hdmi For Sound

Then there s the threat of damage if an optical cable is bent too tightly.

Optical cable vs hdmi for sound. These types of cables work through using a pulsing wave of light to relay audio signals from a source to a receiving device. An optical digital connection uses the medium of light to transmit data through a cable s optical fibres which can be. Rca and optical debate for speakers and sound systems. Both can pass multi channel audio like dolby digital.

In fact some have claimed that digital optical cables relay slightly better sound than an hdmi cable. Both are better than analog the red and white cables. However the coaxial cables make the audio sound better than the optical digital cables to a greater extent. If you can t optical is decent enough for your audio or sound needs.

If you watch movies frequently with a home theater system use the hdmi cable. Coaxial vs optical vs hdmi which is the best audio connection to use. To clarify the official term for optical cables that are used solely for audio is toslink. The basics of hdmi vs.

Most tvs do support optical cables but it s not nearly as popular as hdmi. Moreover with optical cables the usage is limited to speakers up to 5 1 while hdmi takes advantage of dolby truehd and dts hd master audio. When comparing hdmi vs. Optical audio cables for sound quality hdmi is better than optical.

The optical port format also known as toslink or toslink is the format. The vast majority of consoles and displays support hdmi. An optical connection also can t support more than two channels of uncompressed pcm audio. Hdmi is superior to both but if you were to choose between only them for various reasons then keep on reading.

Both hdmi and optical pass digital audio from one device to another. The optical cable on the other hand can only support up to 96 khz. Although consistent and high quality it lacks the edge provided by the hdmi for video. If the sound system is solely set up for audio and music either cable will perform the same function.

This is why between hdmi and optical the simplest advice is to go hdmi as much as possible. The coaxial cable has better bandwidth than the optical cable and offers support for up to 192 khz. Optical on the other hand can only transfer the audio from one device to another with no video support. As you can see from the chart above hdmi is the best type of audio cable format available compared to optical digital coaxial and rca cables.

Launched in 2002 the biggest benefit of hdmi is it s a one size fits all connection for video and audio. A digital optical cable also referred to as an optical cable will produce a reliable and consistent sound.