12' Toslink/S-Video A/V Dubbing Cable $9.97 @ Radio Shack

[Slickone]

What's the part # for the $4.97 6' at RS?

Originally posted by: Scorpi0
PartsExpress.com has optical cables with decent price. $4.50 + sh for 12'.

Then these for $5 at RS aren't such a good deal then?

 

[Slickone]

^

 

[JImmyK]

jsut bought 2 12 footers I neded botht eh s video cable and the optic one. hahah sweet!

 

[Antoneo]

Originally posted by: JImmyK
jsut bought 2 12 footers I neded botht eh s video cable and the optic one. hahah sweet!

Hrmm, anyone know if this deal is still on in the NYC area? I'd like to get a 3' or 6' optical cable. I'd like to know as well if the Radio Shack toslink is better than the cheapie from partsexpress...

 

[KokomoGST]

Deal is going as long as the store you're visiting has them...

Besides, I bet RS _isn't_ losing money on those cables considering how much they prolly cost the company... same deal with Monster cables or any other cables they sell at electronics stores. Talk about insane markup!

 

[gba]

<FONT face=Verdana size=1>Slickone, I got two 12 footers for $4.97 at RS. That part number is (was?) 15-1582. It still had the orginal price sticker on it as well... $29.99.</FONT>

 

[Slickone]

So can you get these for about these prices or less, via mailorder? I got a few of the $9.99 ones. Trying to decide whether to keep them or not.

gba, how did you manage that?

 

[gba]

Originally posted by: Slickone
So can you get these for about these prices or less, via mailorder? I got a few of the $9.99 ones. Trying to decide whether to keep them or not.

gba, how did you manage that?

I was just in the right place at the right time. They had them on clearance b/c they aren't going to stock them anymore, They had the original $29.99 stickers on them right along side the blowout $4.97 price.

 

[Fritzo]

Another good place to check for these types of cables is Target in their clearence piles. I scored a 9' TOSlink cable for $.84 two weeks ago They seem to have them there all the time.

 

[loup garou]

Wow! This thread is still alive???

 

[Slickone]

Originally posted by: werk
Wow! This thread is still alive???

Yep.

Also, do gold contact cables make much of a difference in optical cables?

 

[mbackof]

Gold doesn't make a bit of difference in optical cables.
The better ones have glass tubing instead of plastic for the light path.
Better ones also have connectors that don't fall out of the hardware connection.
That is about all you need to know. I've seen them as cheap as $15 and as expensive as $120.
Buy within your means.

 

[Slickone]

Do you know if the Gold series from Radio Shack are glass tube? I'm trying to decide whether to return them or not. I only got 'em since they were on clearance and I plan to get a new A/V system in the future. Who knows when though. If I could get them right now elsewhere for the same price, I'd rather just wait and get exactly what I need then. Plus they may be cheaper by then.
What I got:
(2) 12ft Toslink optical with S-video - $10 each
(1) 6ft Toslink optical with S-video - $10
(2) 3ft Toslink optical only - $3 each (proabably keep these)

Return em?

 

[Slickone]

^

 

[Slickone]

Bump. Can't decide whether to keep these or not.

 

[StudioGigger]

I just got 2 of the Gold Series 6' S-Video/Optical wires from RS for $9 each. They were labeled as $39+ and there was no sign around stating that there was a sale. They work excellent. Also picked up a 3' Gold Series coaxle cable for $9. Nice stuff.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: werk

Originally posted by: Slickone
Can't imagine so many people needing 12' cables. Why? Guess cable length isn't an issue with digital cables (?), but w/ S-video, it's best to get the shortest you need, right?

Wrong.

All that link says, is that the cable length has to exceed 50', for there to be any attenuation of the signal due to the cable. It says nothing about the likelyhood of interference or noise induction, from having too long a run of cable, and having that long run routed incorrectly, or run near an AC line. In the real world, shorter runs of cable carrying analog signals is decidedly better.

 

[Slickone]

To be clear, I was considering returning them since I wasn't sure if they were a good deal or not (see my other posts), and not because of the length.

 

[mindless1]

nm

 

[batmanuel]

Originally posted by: mbackof
Gold doesn't make a bit of difference in optical cables.
The better ones have glass tubing instead of plastic for the light path.
Better ones also have connectors that don't fall out of the hardware connection.
That is about all you need to know. I've seen them as cheap as $15 and as expensive as $120.
Buy within your means.

I'm curious why you need the better cables with a digital interface. I though digital audio was all or nothing, like most things digital, and that there was none of the issues with noise that you have with analog audio interfaces. So what difference does having a glass or plastic light path make, so long as the bits get there all in one piece? I know audiophiles are notoriously superstitious when it comes to cables, but to me it seems like a $120 optical cable is a creation of a company that knows it can milk those auidophiles for everything they're worth.

They do, after all, have a tendancy to think expensive cabling sounds better simply because they WANT it to sound better after laying out all that cash. As Dan over at Dan's Data points out in one of his discussions of UPS systems, these folks never do any SINGLE blind testing on these fancy cables, let alone double blind testing to find out if they really make a difference or if the placebo effect is what is keeping the makers of Monster brand products in business.

"High quality" optical cabling just reminds me a but too much of the BS I heard from one salesperson who actually told me that the $30 gold-plated Belkin USB cables would give me a better printout than a cheap generic $5 USB cable. This was especially funny because the only gold plating they added to those cables is on the outer shell of the plug, a part that never makes electrical contact. The part that DOES make contact is always gold, as per the USB specification. Somehow I think those glass optical cables are a similar type of snake oil.

 

[Mockmaw]

My understanding (and I'm not authoritative here) is that digital is designed to be.. well.. 'crisp', but that the data is essentially all or nothing. With a CD for example, a scratch on the media will prevent certain blocks of audio or data from being read. It's all or nothing, you either read the block or you don't. Same seems to happen with digital cell phones too, you either receive the signal or you don't (as compared to cellular where bad reception causes static, not the 'dropping-out' effect). In this way, I imagine digital audio would be the same. Any 'scratch' or other inhibitor on the transfer medium will cause a 'drop-out' of a certain portion of the audio stream. Just speculation on my part though (although I stand behind my statements about optical media and cellphones).

Certainly I will admit: I have no idea why you need to pay $100+ for an audio cable. However, I believe the possibility that some may be able to hear differences more than others. To a beginning guitarist, the difference in sound between a hundred dollar starter guitar and a several thousand dollar hand made instrument may be virtually non-existent, but the difference to an experienced or trained individual will be well pronounced.

 

[batmanuel]

The $100 analog optical cable I can understand, since in an analog signal there can be major differences in quality depending on the cabling. The $100 digital audio cable is the one I am having trouble with, since it is all or nothing and quality never comes into play. Like you said, it is all or nothing.

I don't notice any drop outs at all on my cheap generic Toslink cable, so I really doubt if my DVDs would sound any better on a $100 cable. I might see a need for really pure glass if you were doing extremely long cable runs, but other than that I think it really doesn't make any difference. I suspect that lost bits would be REALLY noticable in a home theater environment, since DTS and Dolby Digital tracks are compressed and losing even a relatively little bit data could conceivably cause the whole audio track to uncompress wrong, whereas CDs are basically uncompressed WAV files that just need to be converted into audio signals and not decoded first, so each bit of data exists independently of the other bits (so damage to a few bits doesn't render the rest unreadable).