I want to connect my computer to my home stereo so I can play my music library and streaming music through my receiver in the living room. My sound card has a SP/DIF digital optical "OUT" and my receiver has an extra digital optical "IN" so I know it's possible. My problem is this: Because of the location of the two items in my house and how I need to run the cable(down through the floor, across the basement and then back up through the floor behind the stereo), it's going to require a 35 ft. long Toslink cable. I found a 40 ft. "Pro-quality" cable on ebay which I ordered. Has anyone here run a Toslink cable that far? Did it work OK? You usually don't see optical runs of more than 8 ft or so. If I could do digital coaxial instead I would, but I don't have that output on my PC.

 

The length on the type of fiber optic cable used. Some toslink cables use plastic optical fiber. Thus, the length that may be safely used without signal degradation, about 20-25 ft. However, high quality toslink cables used optical quality glass fiber optical cable, and these may be run at very long lengths without loss of signal quality. Instead, the limiting factor is the strength of the signal light of the transmitter (CD player, DVD player, etc.).

 

That's one of the things that has me a little worried. The sending signal is coming from my computer's sound card, not a high-end stereo component.