Glass v.s. Plastic Toslink

Glass is definitely better.

however, the red LED looks better, smoother, easier to look at at the end of the monster cable plastic monofilament than at the end of the 280 strands glass cable I have.
In theory, glass is better to conduct light, no doubt, but I bet that the strands within my audio cable are fractured because of bends and frictions. the length I use is 3ft. I have tried 2 glass toslink based on opinions, but plastic stays in.

The thread was started quite a while back, but I'll chime in...

I've been using the Sonicwave cable mentioned here. Easily better than any plastic toslink cable I've used - Kimber, Audioquest, and 2 others that escape my memory.

I've heard from a few sources that the connectors are critical in optical. Mine click in pretty snug. One or two of the others didn't do this so well. Another part of the connector is the length of the pin, so to speak, that goes into the component - some are too long, some are too short. There was a glass cable that a lot of people didn't like very much, and it happened to not fit tightly. I think it was a Parts Express cable? Or maybe they sold it. People on the Red Wine Audio circle at Audio Circle were complaining about it, as were a few others elsewhere.

At the end of the day, what sounds best is a personal thing. My Sonicwave cable sounds better than anything else I've tried. Then again, it's the only glass cable I've tried. And for once, it was easily the cheapest one I've tried.

The Litepipe from Silfatec comes in two styles, the flimsy plastic coating (white) or metal cased. I was told by the rep you could run over the metal version.
Just in case you were worried about crimping.
The connectors are quite snug.
Plastic? Meh...

I have read an interesting comment on the lifatec silflex website saying that the quality of Plastic Optical Fiber is so good that we are not giving up in performance using plastic over glass, especially over 3 feet!
In addition, the Toshiba opto electrical components were designed to be used with plastic fiber of a specific aperture.
By bundling many strands, you will not achieve the exact aperture of a single plastic optical fiber.
As one mentioned, a lot of it is how that cable is hooked up to the optical module.
I have to add that the DVD/CD transport I am using is a Yamaha S540, and I believe it was on the market probably around 2002. So it may not have the latest blu-ray ready opto electrical components that actually may be designed to work with glass fibers.