Optical vs Coaxial

[Arky]

I wonder if the original person who posted the question knows the anser.....it's been 4 years since asked.

I doubt it.

[Champagne taste beer budget]

Waaaadddaahelllll!!

ne_surfer you blasphemer!! I'll be huntin' ye down like a dog and lashing you 3 gooduns with a length of coax and 3 gooduns with a length of fiber optic and you will soon discover the error of yer ways laddie!!

OW! WOW! YIPE! OOH! OY!My mistress has just demonstrated that for all practical purposes optical and coax are the same. I'll put away me 'unting fig.

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It is meet to recall that the Great Green Heron rarely flies upside down in the moonlight - (Foo Ling ca.1900)

This message has been edited by lynnm on 03-19-2002 at 10:19 PM

Miss your insights and humor, Lynn. Say hi to some friends and family members for me, k?

[TNRabbit]

I've been using $3 optical cable I bought off eBay for several months now with nary a problem. I cannot tell ANY difference other than the weight of my wallet.

[Rivendell61]

I was surprised to learn that amoung the upper class audio crew, there is a preference for coax. They believe optical to introduce jitter as well as additional componets in the path.

Toslink will add jitter (which does not neccessarily mean it is, in all situations, inferior to coax). A baseline jitter estimate for a straight Toslink cable (it increases if the cable is bent) would be adding perhaps a few ns (nanoseconds) of jitter. This is well into the region of potential audibility.

1) Will you hear it? Maybe.... Depends on several things. It certainly will be lowering signal transparency.

2) Is it bad? Yes and maybe.... That amount of jitter would certainly be avoided in any 'serious' application i.e., recording. Jitter damages the signal, reduces the s/n performance, etc. Subjectively who knows? Audiophiles like to say they hate the sound of jitter yet they generally seem to like any gear with added signal damage :-) In fact, there is some evidence that the added jitter from using an external clock on a DAC is preferred by some....

But certainly most would choose the less jitter/better signal transparency path. The easiest way to do that is with a good DAC which is jitter immune--there are a handful on the market.

Mark

[Guest " "]

"The easiest way to do that is with a good DAC which is jitter immune--there are a handful on the market."

I'm on the hunt right now for a good DAC.  

I tried the optical vs coax ab test and the coax sounded significantly better....to my surprise.....well surprise was not the word...I was actually startled at the difference.

I'm wondering if I can use a high end HT processor as a DAC.  It has the coax and optical inputs for all sources, as well as an input selector for CD, SAT, DVD, AUX, etc, and uses the same chips found in decent DAC's.

[turntable3]

Yes there is an audible difference between optical and coax. I hooked up my Denon DVD 2200 to an AKG Hearo 999 digital wireless headphone with coax and optical cable. On the Hearo I can toggle between both inputs. The optical input sounds a bit weeker, smoother and more laid back compared to coax. Coax seems to have some more slam and is more clear in the highs. Same result with the Teac connected to the AKG Hearo.

Another testing I did was: I hooked the Denon DVD 2200 with both digital connections to my Teac VRDS 25x where you can toggle between digital inputs too. The result was the same as above. The Scalas are revealing even the slightest differences.

My decision: I use mainly coax for digital connections.

But: to prevent hum-loops I use optical cable watching DVDs with the Denon hooked to the stereo-system (or the headphone-system) and to the tv-system.

@speakerfritz: there are people using a HT-Processor as a Dac. Some years ago this has been recommended by a german hifi-mag.

Jack