New in the box. I opened the box to take photos of the cable while it was still in the factory tray. The cable has never been removed or used at all.

I purchased this from an authorized dealer and it sat before I got to installing it. I then realized that I ordered the wrong size. By this time it was too late to return. It sat in storage for about a year and now its listed here.

The box shows signs of storage wear but the cable is 100% intact and has never been touched.

AudioQuest designed their Forest OptiLink cable for those seeking high performance on a budget. Offering upgraded construction and performance compared to AQ's entry-level Pearl series, Forest provide a distortion-free connection between digital audio source components — CD players, Blu-ray or DVD players — and A/V receivers, DACs, and even some sound bars.

The core of the Forest is a single finely polished, low-distortion polymer fiber conductor that minimizes signal loss and jitter (time-based distortion). The cable has full-size Toslink connectors at each end, reinforced by a brass ferrule, which helps ensure ideal light transmission for the highest quality sound.

Optical cables carry signals as pulses of light rather than a stream of electrons, so they are virtually impervious to magnetic or electrical interference. Unlike cables made of wire which require some type of metal connector to transfer the signal between components, in an optical cable, the very tip of the connector is the fiber itself, and it requires special polishing to reduce light refractions.