Can optical cables just simply fail?

[Diggs]

I turned on my stereo today to listen to some tunes and I get nothing. I mess around with the digital auto selector and switch the optical cable to the DVD player and change the settings accordingly and nothing still. It keeps trying to set it on analog even though it says on-screen that it's CD: Optical 1 So I'm thinking this is just great, my receiver isn't receiving anything through the optical inputs and start to get rather upset. I don't want to have to buy another receiver or pay to get this one fixed, (I have another purchase coming involving more KG4's, a KV3, and some KG1.2's. Don't want to have to add a new receiver to the mix) So I try another optical cable I have lying around (for my Xbox, which I still need some adapter for to hook up to the Xbox, which is probably going to be another $40. Money grubbing bastards ) and it works flawlessly. I think, hmm maybe something was just loose, so I try the old optical cable and get nothing. Has anyone ever heard of an optical cable failing? Is this common? I don't think I've even touched the backside of the receiver lately except to hook up the Xbox. Odd to say the least.

[j-malotky]

since they have a glass core, they usually fail because they have been kinked, bent too tight or evan stepped on.

In my works datacenter, all the optical GBIC's are all in solid conduit tubs just in case something accidently falls on them or steps on them.

JM

[justin_tx_16]

My dad's office was recently wired with optical cables. (we both don't know why....LoL)

anyways, i found a few extra strands on the floor. when i bent them past say 35 degrees i could see some shearing. in a toslink cable you have TONS of these fibers, so you can prevent TOTAL failure. But with every bend I could see that it got weaker and weaker and the fragmentation would easily cause some problems wiht light passing through, i could see that as I put them onto the light on my key chain. It got dimmer and dimmer the more I bent it, obviously. Just imagine if you accidentally bent it too sharply!

[MagnumMan]

My experience with optical cables leads me to think they can be tricky. When I first hooked up my friend's cd player with optical,I plugged it all the way in and got nothing. Then I pulled it out just a tad and let it rest there, and it worked fine. He just recently moved. Same cable and same player. it worked after plugging it all the way in.

Give that a try and also try reversing the ends and see what it does.

[marksdad]

fibre optics are a funny creature, i sometimes have occasion to install these, and there are minimum radiusus for optimum transmission, and yes in computer rooms for instance, they always have plenty on hand for failure, becaause they do fail, they are very delicate, terminations have to be just so, bump them you buy em, but for speed they cant be beat

[Diggs]

Wow, I had no idea they were so fragile. Maybe I bumped it against the wall when putting the receiver back in place. I think I'm going to stick with digital coax from now on.