Testing Optical Audio Cables........... (1 Viewer)

[parlyle]

Is it possible to have an optical audio cable "go bad".
I was realizing a drop out of some sound from a Dish DVR (722) through a Samsung Home Theater system. Not all the time, but some of the time. Usually on CNN HD.
I didn't have any luck with switching the speakers/ wire, so I finally replaced the toslink and seems to have done the trick.
Now, is there any way to make sure that the cable was faulty?
Any response will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks:

Lyle

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Well, an optical cable won't "go bad" in the sense of wearing out or corroding, but it can break, which has pretty much the same result. Such a cable is little more than a bundle of glass or plastic fibres and if you bend one of them too far, it snaps like a piece of vermicelli. All you have to do is press an optical cable the wrong way, get it crimped in door of a cabinet for a second or accidentally rest a heavy object on it and you may break some of the delicate fibers and end up with intermittent connections or none at all. (I once worked for a company that used fiber-optics to tie several buildings in an office park together. One of the links kept going down and could always be fixed by replacing the fiber cable, but we couldn't figure out how it kept breaking since it plugged into a wall outlet with nothing else near it, inside a secure computer room that was only accessed by IT staff and two senior accounting people - because the check printer was located there. Until one day when I happened to be in the room working on an unrelated problem and the head of accounting - a very tall, beefy fellow - came in to clear a paper jam on the check printer. Because the printer was big and heavy and on a stand with no wheels he had to press up close to the wall to reach the jam, and as he bent over to clear it his ample bottom brushed up against our optical jack, immediately klling the network connection for the building. Naturally no one had ever thought to mention the paper jam thing any of the other times this happened. )

That's one reason I always use coax for digital audio connections when I have a choice. A/V connections aren't quite as unforgiving as pure data connections, but they still don't work and play well with a busted optical cable.

As for testing - I'm not sure how you'd go about doing that apart from using the "bad" cable to connect another component and see if the problem follows it. (Or letting a friend test it on his system.) Also not really sure it is worth it. You seem to have fixed the problem and optical cables are cheap if you know where to shop. Be very careful around the new cable. If the problem doesn't come back, you know it was the old cable. If it does and you're sure that neither you, the kids, the pets, visitors, etc. have been anywhere near the cable, then it wasn't and you'll need to continue troubleshooting. (And you'll know the "bad" cable isn't.)

But odds are it was.

Regards,

Joe

 

[parlyle]

Thanks a lot Joe!
It really puts my mind at ease, and the problem hasn't shown up again. I did get a little muffled sound out of MSNBC today, but wasn't at all like the actual problem I wrote about.
I have put the other cable in a bag and marked it ? DEFECTIVE ? If in the future I have the notion, I might use it somewhere else, like you said and see if the problem still exists. Till then, I will enjoy the sound I have now.
Thanks again:

Lyle