Griffin Technology Xpress Cable

More and more digital-music-related products use optical connections — instead of traditional analog ones — for sending audio. For example, if you want to get audio from Apple’s AirPort Express (or from the optical audio output of many recent computers) to Apple’s new iPod Hi-Fi, you’ll get higher quality audio by using an optical cable.

Optical cables are fairly easy to find nowadays, but there are two things that make finding the right cable a challenge. The first is the potential for overpaying: Although there are higher-end optical cables worth paying good money for, many electronics stores charge $30-$40 for their least expensive — and fairly low-quality — models. The other is connectors: There are two common types of optical audio connectors, miniplug (which looks like the familiar 1/8″ headphone connector) and Toslink (which is squarish in shape); although the signal carried by the cable is the same, you can’t connect a Toslink plug to a mini jack or a miniplug to a Toslink jack. So before shopping for a cable, you need to figure out which connector is used by your audio source and which is used by the component to which audio is being sent — and then go buy the appropriate cable.

Like Griffin’s handy iPod Home Connection Kit, the company’s Xpress Cable makes buying the right cable easy. The Xpress Cable package includes a miniplug-to-miniplug optical cable along with two miniplug-to-Toslink adapters. So you can easily connect two miniplug devices, two Toslink devices, or a miniplug to a Toslink. All for $20. Granted, the cable quality isn’t as good as some of the models you can buy — for hundreds of dollars — at a high-end audio store, but for the typical computer or iPod Hi-Fi owner, it will do just fine. –Dan Frakes