If you like great sound then you’ll want to consider a digital optical toslink audio connection cable when hooking up an audio source to an amplifier. Digital Optical is one of the best connection cables for connecting an audio source to your sound system. 

How to Connect a Digital Optical Toslink Audio Cable

1. Check your Equipment. Make sure your audio source equipment, such as a CD player, and your stereo amplifier both have a Toslink connection. This connection will be located on the back side connection panel on both pieces of equipment. Not all home electronic equipment supports toslink.

2. Take a measurement. A toslink cable is somewhat specialized and therefore only comes in a few lengths. Consider measuring how long of a cable you need and then buy one that is a little longer. Many times you will have to go to a specialty store or online to get longer length cables beyond 6 feet.

3.  Plug it in.  Plug one end of the cable into your audio source equipment and the other end into the stereo amplifier.

4. Set your input. If your stereo amplifier allows for multiple audio input sources then in order to listen to the source you just connected with the toslink cable you need to set the correct input. The source input selector knob or button can be found on the front face, or top, or remote control of your stereo amplifier.

Also, in living room based Surround Sound systems you might want to incorporate this cable so you listen to surround sound only when you watch a movie or sporting event. In other words, if when you’re watching the news on TV and you only want to hear sound from your TV speakers consider adding this cable to your surround sound setup.

How the Optical Toslink Cable became popular.

The Toslink cable was invented in 1983 by Toshiba to connect CD players to the stereo. The audio track which is transmitted via the Toslink cable is digital and therefore reproduces a noticeably higher quality sound when compared with analog RCA. By playing the same CD connected to a stereo via Toslink as opposed to RCA cables a listener should quickly notice the higher quality sound resulting from use of the Toslink cable.

Toslink was widely adopted by manufacturers and can generally be found on most electronics sold today. It is the preferred audio only connection but can also be combined with component video cables to further enhance a high quality movie experience.

Not every piece of electronic equipment however is outfitted for a Toslink audio connection. A quick way to determine if your equipment has this connection option is to take a close look at the ends of this cable and see if your electronics have matching connections.