Speaker technology moves a bit more slowly than our other gadgets, but that doesn’t mean that their connections lag behind. Optical cables were sufficient 30 years ago, but these days, they’re holding your sound system back.
Optical doesn’t support modern audio standards
Keep the fiber optics for your network, not your sound system
Optical audio cables, despite sounding fancy, are actually pretty old technology—they were introduced in the 1980s. Because of their age, they were mostly designed to carry uncompressed two-channel audio, and subsequent upgrades eventually enabled them to carry compressed 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound audio.
However, they’re not up to the job of carrying a signal for a modern soundbar or AVR—they are much too limited.
Modern audio formats like Dolby Atmos can theoretically support more than 30 different speakers, which allows a sound system to make it appear as though sound is coming from almost any point around you. That much information requires an incredible amount of bandwidth compared to the uncompressed stereo signal optical cables were originally designed for.
Most soundbars don’t come close to the limit of what is possible with Atmos, but soundbars that support 7.2.2 which means seven speakers surrounding you, two subwoofers, and two Atmos speakers, are common. If you try to connect your TV to a soundbar like that with an optical cable, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. In a best-case scenario, all the channels will be active, but you’ll lose the Atmos surround effect, and your audio will be compressed to meet the bandwidth limitations. In a worst-case scenario, some speakers in the setup might not produce any sound at all.
If you paid good money for an audio setup, be that an all-in-one soundbar system or an AVR with separate speakers, do yourself a favor and use HDMI instead.
You can’t use ARC or eARC
Configuring devices manually is now unnecessary
Enhanced Audio Return Channel (eARC) is designed to make connecting all your devices easier by giving them the ability to directly communicate over HDMI.
eARC allows two devices to automatically select the audio format that they’re going to use. If your movie, TV, and soundbar are all capable of Dolby Atmos, then eARC allows the TV and the soundbar to sort out the details themselves. You don’t have to manually adjust anything.
Arc is an older standard that provides similar functionality to eARC, but doesn’t support uncompressed, multichannel audio like Dolby Atmos.
Optical cables don’t support anything like ARC or eARC at all. They’re not capable of transmitting the kind of data needed for devices to automatically determine the best audio format, and while passive optical cables are physically able to transmit data in both directions, optical connections aren’t designed to operate that way.
What Is eARC?
Simplify your home theater or TV setup with this nifty feature
The ability of HDMI to send data in both directions doesn’t just allow devices to negotiate audio formats; it enables one of the most underappreciated features in modern technology: HDMI-CEC.
HDMI-CEC isn’t possible
Controlling your devices is tedious with optical
Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) is an HDMI feature that allows devices that are connected over HDMI to communicate directly with each other. If you have a soundbar plugged into your TV, it lets you do things like turn off your soundbar by shutting down your TV or adjust your soundbar’s volume by adjusting the volume on your TV.
It makes connecting and controlling multiple devices much simpler since you don’t need to keep track of half a dozen different remotes that each only control one device. CEC lets one remote control everything.
Unfortunately, optical cables can’t do CEC at all. If you opt to use an optical cable, you’re going to spend a lot of time switching back and forth between at least two remotes: your TV remote and your soundbar remote. If you add extra devices to the mix, like a Blu-ray player or a PlayStation 5, it gets even worse.
CEC isn’t a fancy, marketable feature like an 8K resolution or a 240Hz refresh rate, but it is an incredible quality of life improvement that you definitely don’t want to miss out on.
If you’re using a soundbar made in the last 10 years, you definitely need to use HDMI so you can take advantage of CEC.
If you’re just using a pair of stereo speakers or a stereo soundbar, then you aren’t going to lose anything by using an optical cable. However, most soundbars these days are at least three channels, and many of them support 5.1, 7.1, or even Dolby Atmos.
In those situations, the optical cable is a huge bottleneck in the performance of your system, and if you spent good money on a soundbar, it doesn’t make sense to hold it back. Buy the $20 HDMI 2.1 cable instead.
- Length(s)
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6.6 feet
- Materials/Construction
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Zinc Alloy, Braided
- Brand
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UGREEN
Available in lengths of 6 feet and longer, the UGREEN HDMI 2.1 Certified Cable is perfect for gaming as it adheres to all HDMI 2.1 specifications.
