Toslink Plastic Optical Fiber Cable

TOSLINK is a standardized optical fiber connection system. Its most common use is in consumer audio equipment (via a "digital optical" socket), where it carries a digital audio stream between components such as MiniDisc and CD players and DAT recorders. TOSLINK usually use inexpensive a jacket cable of 2.2 mm with a 1 mm plastic optical fiber core or it can use higher quality multi-strand plastic optical fibers or even quartz glass optical fibers depending on the desired bandwidth and application.

TOSLINK was originally created by Toshiba to connect their CD players to their receivers for PCM audio streams, but it was soon adopted for most CD players, regardless of manufacturer. Early TOSLINK systems used raw data from the CD player, but the S/PDIF standard has now become fairly universal for audio streams. It can often be found on DVD players and some game consoles to connect the digital audio stream to Dolby Digital/DTS decoders.

TOSLINK signal cables must be limited to below 10 meters or, in many cases, under 5 for reliable transmission unless using a signal booster.

The real benefit to optical fiber for audio is that it is not susceptible to line noise or other electromagnetic phenomena.

TOSLINK is a registered trademark of Toshiba Corporation and hence the origin of the name: Toshiba-LINK. Variations of the name are often seen, such as TOSlink, TosLink, and Tos-link. The generic name for the standard is EIAJ optical.

Toslink connector with jacket size 2, 2, 4.0, 5.0, 6, 0, 7.0, 8.0mm.