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FEBRUARY 20, 2004 Leave It to Radio Shack ...  Twenty bucks doesn’t buy much anymore. Two movie tickets and some popcorn, or a half tank at the gas station perhaps. Certainly, it doesn’t buy audio gear, even with Chinese factories pushing down manufacturing costs.But if your digital audio setup includes ADAT optical connectors, take a $20 bill and go directly to Radio Shack. There you’ll find a three in/one out optical switcher priced at $19.99. You’d better hurry, before they raise the price. Called the Digital Optical Selector (model 15-1586), this device is essentially a passive digital patchbay. It allows you to route signals from three different optical sources into one destination. And although it’s not revealed in the one-page “manual,” the device also works in reverse, routing one source into three destinations. [an error occurred while processing this directive] ADAT Optical, also known as Lightpipe, was introduced by Alesis in the 1990s for its ADAT digital recorders. Since then, Lightpipe interfaces with Toslink jacks have been incorporated into a multitude of devices, including digital tape machines, sound cards, hard disk recorders, computers, converters, effects boxes and digital mixers. Each optical connector is able to transmit eight channels of digital audio at up to 24-bit/48kHz resolution. The format has remained popular because the jacks are small, unobtrusive and inexpensive, and the optical stream is immune to electronic interference. Unfortunately, most audio projects require more routing flexibility than eight channels in and out will provide. So unless you have devices with multiple optical jacks, you’re forced to continually repatch cables. Even devices such as Frontier Design’s 16-channel Dakota PCI audio card (with four optical jacks) need 16 corresponding channels to connect with. And are 16 channels really enough? Sooner or later, you must climb under your desk to unplug and repatch. Not only is this hard on your knees, the wear and tear is not good for cables. Also, great care must be used to avoid getting dirt and dust on the tip of the cable, which would impede the optical signal flow. Radio Shack’s Digital Optical Selector offers cheap relief for this problem. It’s a straightforward little black plastic device resembling a squashed hockey puck. The major feature is a four-position dial in the middle for selecting the input source, with a non-electronic green indicator on the chosen source. The dial is locked to prevent users from changing channels accidentally. To select a different source, you push the button while turning the dial.  The unit’s Toslink optical jacks are evenly spaced around the front, in line with the dial positions. There’s no power plug -- this is strictly a passive switching device that does not degrade audio quality. If you want to interface your DAW with an outboard digital signal processor such as Kurzweil’s KSP8, or different channels on a digital mixing board, or an outboard D/A converter, this $20 device makes it simple. You could add more Digital Optical Selectors if the three optical inputs are not enough. But at that point, you should probably consider stepping up to a more robust optical patchbay. There are units with far more flexibility, such as Z-Systems’ 8 I/O OptiPatch ($549 list) or Frontier Design’s 12 I/O Apache ($799 list). These devices can send one source to multiple destinations, or select multiple sources to a single destination, with multiple configurations that can be saved and recalled. They offer total routing convenience, allowing any channels to be sent to any others. But if you don’t need that level of flexibility, the Digital Optical Selector is ideal. Its four Toslink input/output jacks and one Toslink output/input jack connect up to four digital optical sources. This is especially helpful for expanding an eight-channel optical interface such as M-Audio’s Delta 1010 AI, a companion piece to the Delta 1010 PCI card. Radio Shack didn’t have pro audio gear in mind for this device, and the clerk at my local Radio Shack drew a blank look when the subject came up. They’re offering it for use with optical consumer stereo gear, of which there’s a fair amount now. It doesn’t really matter what they’re selling it for -- the fact is it works with pro audio gear. At the price, it’s worth picking up even if you don’t have an immediate need. You can always sell it on Ebay for $10 if times get tough!
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