Acoustic-Fun SIO Quartz Multi-Fiber TOSlink Cable(Click photo for direct link to our web store)
Acoustic-Fun SIO Cable is a high quality optical cable with performance far exceeds what other run-of-the-mill optical cables can achieve. It is done by addressing the fundamental issues that affect all fiber optic cables, the ability to pass light signal with minimal distortions.
What distortions?Well, a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a simple illustration of the basic principle behind our advantage: (Click for larger version)
 | Here we have a comparison of both cables.
While large diameter allows the light to easily enter, it also causes the problem of allowing light to scatter and travel in paths of wildly different distance. This will result in the same light pulse arriving at different time, and thus causing jitter in the final decoded signal.
The finer strands of our quartz multi-fiber cable limits the excessive scatter and reflections. Which results in a much cleaner signal with far lower jitter and scattering. This effect will get even more pronounced as the high definition audio gets more popular and widespread, as precise transmission of data is the advantage of our SIO cable. Not to mention Quartz itself is a superior medium for light transmission.
Think of it this way, light takes 3.3ns to travel across 1.0M of vacuum(about 4.7~4.9ns for quartz/acrylic), if some of the light had to travel across 50% longer distances due to the bouncing path that it took, it would mean a huge jitter of more than 1.7ns. While most S/PDIF receiver chips have jitter of 250ps or less(better ones are around 50ps), which is almost an order of magnitude lower than the plastic cable. Why would you limit your system with a sub-par cable?
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This advantage allows SIO series' quartz optical cable excels in providing very high details, sound-stage, imaging, transparency and focus. It is quite unlike any plastic optical cables that tend to produce a muddy and unfocused sound. As the bit rate goes even higher, plastic optical cable will begin to have difficulty passing data through, while quartz multi-fiber will still do it with ease.
What else made our SIO series stand out from the rest?- Over 250 strands of high quality quartz optical fibers are used to limit jitter, far more than the 65 strands that the other manufacturers uses.
- Multi-strand quartz optical fiber resists signal attenuation better than the single core through bends, allows much tighter bends with even lower signal loss. However, less bending is always preferred as it allows the cable to excel.
- Fine strands of quartz offers much higher bandwidth than the often used plastic fiber optic cables.
- Quartz fibers are bundled, then micro-polished to perfection before a precision focusing lens is attached to each end, all are done to ensure perfect light transmission.
- Adaptive lens assemblies used will self-adjust and ensure the best optical connection, and also dampen vibrations to and from your equipments.
Notable specs:- Connector diameter: 14.5mm
- Connector type: TOSlink (Lens assembly protected by transparent sleeve seen in photo, remove before installation)
- Cable length: 1.0M
- Minimum bends radius: 35mm
- Cable diameter: 7mm
Before purchasing SIO cable, please check if your equipment has recessed TOSlink socket with smaller than 14.5mm opening like KECES DA-131 series. For DA-131/131.1/131 Mk2 owners, we have
DIY tutorial to widen the opening to 15mm. However, if you are not comfortable with drilling/widening the cut-out, you can follow the tutorial part way to remove the panel and send it to me. I'll do it free of charge(see below for condition).
<B>For tutorial on DIY cutout widening, please click here.</B>If your equipment has TOSlink socket flush with the panel, then you are all set and the cable will fit without the slightest of problems.
Drill-131-For-Ya Fee Table:Service Charge: Free if your DA-131 is purchased from us, or it is a second hand unit from someone who got it from us originally.
Shipping Charge: Free if you are buying anything on our web site or if your 131 had been purchased from us on or after May 1st, 2009. You can also upgrade your 131.1/131 Mk2's IEC socket while your DA-131's rear panel is in for the mod.
Please contact us before sending your panel back, as we need to know if it is to be upgraded and/or shipped back to you with other products that you have ordered.
$15 shipping fee is only charged if DA-131 is purchased from us
before May 1st, 2009 and no product is purchased to be shipped back together with the panel.
If you are sending back your 131 or ordering your 131 Mk2 with the upgrade, please know that this upgrade is done manually and there might be some imperfections when inspected up close. We will replace the panel if unintended damaged was caused during the upgrade, but please understand that there might be some "slightly less than perfect" finish on the opening itself.
FAQ:Q1: My original ***** (insert your own plastic fiber optical cable name) is brighter, why isn't your Quartz cable brighter?
A1: Quartz multi-fiber indeed isn't as bright as a large diameter plastic fiber optic cable. However, the function of the cable is not illumination, but to transmit digital signals with great precision. Larger diameter plastic fiber allows a lot of light to pass, but also allows the light to scatter wildly in it, causing large amount of jitter and signal degradation. Think of the plastic cable's effect as a "blur" filter, it does not make light dimmer, but it smears the boundary of "on" and "off". This is one of the main problems with plastic fibers.
Q2: ***** maker claim (insert the name of fiber optic maker's web site you've just seen) that plastic fiber works just great, and would not be making any notable difference, unless the cable is like 50 to 100 meters long.
A2: We are not quite sure what they've tested, but we have tried many different plastic fiber optic cable, and a few variants of quartz optical cable ourselves. We found very significant differences between quartz and plastic fibers. Even more significantly, a few meters of extra cable length can have a noticeable effect on sound more when in comparison to the regular 1.0M version. We've tested 1.0M and 3.0M versions of them and found (in order of descending sound quality) 1.0M Quartz > 3.0M Quartz >> 1.0M Plastic > 3.0M Plastic.
Q3: ***** maker also (insert the name of another quartz fiber optic maker's name) have quartz optical cable, what makes yours better(or not)?
A3: We have tested several different types of quartz optical cable, and our use of adaptive lens allows better light focus, fewer scatter and better vibration dampening. The result is clearly and audibly better the ones not equipped with it. (Well, adaptive lens assembly is more expensive, and we use it only because it is better.)
Q4: Will you have longer cable soon?
A4: That depends on popular requests, if a lot of people are letting me know that they want a specific length, I will carry it.
Q5: Will you have good quality plastic cable soon?
A5: That also depends on popular requests, if a lot of people are requesting a budget plastic cable, I will find one that is a reasonable compromise between price and performance.
Interesting stuff:Why is it named SIO? We figured it would be fun to use the chemical symbol of quartz (SiO2) as the series' name, but the subscript "2" is awkward to type, thus we played on the name a little and decided to call it SIO instead.
Boring stuff:All right reserved, no part of this text and photos/images may be used without permission.
(Sorry, had to place this somewhere, I've had some rather unpleasant sellers that swiped a lot of my photos and text without my permission just recently...)
