Optical Toslink cable quality? Is there a difference?

There is a difference in optical toslinks cables if your downstream system is good enough to reveal it.

15 years ago I went on a toslink merry go round and settled on the Lifatec cables posted above. They sounded best. This was when using them between a CD transport and DAC.

That setup is long gone, and I recently needed one between TV and DAC. I got another Lifatec. OK. Then I got the QED Reference Optical

https://www.qed.co.uk/qed-reference-optical-quartz-digital-audio-cable.html

This was a noticable upgrade over the Lifatec. It even surprised me how much better it was, considering it has less strands of glass than the Lifatec, and it's on TV/Xbox duties only

There is a few other botique optical cables out there. DHL Labs and Wireworld to name some I have not tried.

Another rationalization for not spending more while the desire to get something better is eating away from the inside because they don't like the sound that they're getting. The Fox and the Sour Grapes.  That kind of thinking will never come to anything good.

All the best,
Nonoise

i bought the lifatec 8 years ago after i wrote this post - i can't say i really noticed a difference when i put it in from the cheap Kabeldirekt Optical.  it sounds good, but i also have a short cheap coax cable on the same Node 2i -> DAC.  The Coax sounds better.

better resolution was found by going from wifi to ethernet (powerline - gasp!) and putting a iFi audio LAN iSilencer on the back of the Node - huge improvement on solidity and reduction of jitter.

Cheers!

Just remember when it comes to toslink… 

Toslink maxes out at 96kHz/24-bit for stereo PCM and can’t carry higher-resolution formats or uncompressed multichannel audio (like Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio).