That little oft-neglected port can be a real life saver, though. OpticsPlanet is based in Northbrook, Illinois, and this company employs more than 1,500 people.Ever wonder what that trapezoidal вЂњopticalвЂќ audio port is? YouвЂ™ll find theseВ on the back of computers, HDTVs, media receivers, and more, but hardly anyone uses them. Both founders had experience in optics equipment, and OpticsPlanet was created to provide the average consumer with access to the best high-end optics solutions available. OpticsPlanet was founded by Mark Levitin and Pavel Shvartsman in 1999.

I put in the DVD cleaner and it started working again. I have a Macbook pro that was in same situation. Every cable, from the speaker wire on your 1970s turntable to the HDMI cable on your new HDTV, contains wires, wires, and more wires inside.The DVD cleaner discs work well with dusty drives too.

(HDMI is not only simpler, since it carries video and audio together, but it alsoВ supports newer high resolution audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio. So why is the lonely optical cable so underutilized? While that question could be a historical inquiry unto itself, hereвЂ™s the short version: when TOSLINK came out, it was overpowered for most peopleвЂ™sВ needs, and by the time the average consumer was rocking an intense home theater, the TOSLINK cable had been eclipsed by the HDMI cable. (See the photoВ at the top of thisВ article.)Although the standard is over thirty years old now, it has been refined quite a bit,В and modern TOSLINK connections are as useful as ever. Even more distinctive than shape is the fact that when the device is powered on, you can see a faint glow of red laser light around the port door. The TOSLINK port is distinct among all other ports and looks strikingly like a tiny little doggie door into the bowels of your device. The port is typically labeled вЂњoptical audioвЂќ, вЂњTOSLINKвЂќ, вЂњDigital Audio Out (Optical)вЂќ or something similar,В but you certainly donвЂ™t need a label to identify it.

Isolating The AudioYou can separate theВ audio signal from an HDMI cable but itвЂ™s a finicky business that requires decoders, adapters, and a bunch of nonsense bordering on digital black magic. Remember, TOSLINK has been on the market since 1983: there is good chance that a premium audio/video receiver manufactured anytime in the last decade or two has aВ TOSLINK port. You can pipe the HDMI video from the source (say your cable box) into your TV, then turn right back around and pipe the optical audio out to your receiver and speaker system. The vast majority of HDTV sets as well as many Blu-ray players, game consoles, and other devicesВ still have TOSLINK out ports. You have a wonderful and high-quality older media receiver that has every port under the sun except HDMI inputs.You donвЂ™t have to take your premium paid-$1000-for-it-back-in-the-day receiver and put it on Craigslist for pennies on the dollar.

Eliminating Ground Loop HumGround loops are, from an electrical engineering standpoint, a fairly complex subject. In this situation, you can use that sameВ TOSLINK converterВ to send that audio to whatever you want, withoutВ the hassle of HDMI content protection standards. If the Blu-ray player has a TOSLINK port, you canВ pipe out the audio through the optical port to your speakers or receiver.HereвЂ™s another example:В you have a nice set of speakers hooked up to a quality receiver, but that receiver is old enough that it has no digital connections to speak ofвЂ“including no TOSLINK port.В PutВ a $10 optical-to-analog converterВ between your optical audio out and your receiver,В and youвЂ™re in business: you can break the audio out of its digital cage and pipe it into any analog device you want: your wireless headphones, your old receiver, your 1990s-era whole-house audio system, or any other system that only accepts analog audio.What if youВ want to use a pair of analog headphones with your TV, but your spouse wants to use the speakers so they can listen at a different volume?В Many television sets and receivers have a plain old headphone jack, but most of them kill the audio to the speakers when a headphone cable is plugged in.

Remember, TOSLINK cables are fiber optic, and because the cables are either entirely plastic or plastic and glass, there is no electrical conductivity to transfer the ground loop noise.Although HDMI has superseded TOSLINK as the all-in-one, higher-bandwidth solution for most consumers, the humble TOSLINK cable still has a place in the modern media centerвЂ“if for no other reason than those rare moments it saves the day. Sometimes, though, it can cause humming over your speakers and even potentially damage your equipment.В In a perfect world, we would all hunt down the source of the ground loop and fix it, but sometimes youвЂ™re at the mercy of your environment (good luck finding the source of the bad ground if you live in a big apartment complex).In such cases, you can often completely eliminate annoying ground loop humming from your audio system by isolating the offending device with aВ TOSLINK cable. At best, this ground conflict does nothing and you never even notice. In this situation, your power outlets and the connected media equipment are on one ground (hopefully, if your house is up to code, the main earth-ground spike outside) but the coax cable is grounded to another ground (often a water-pipe ground if there is a water pipe or spigot near where the cable enters the home).This disparity between the placement, capacity, and total potential energy of the two different grounding locations causes, in a manner of speaking, congestion in the electrical system.

Optical Cleaner Mac