Optical or Coaxial?

[deepmukherjee]

I was wondering which would be a better option....an optical or a Coaxial cable to carry signals from my cd player to the amp.

Thanks

[krustyoldsarge]

Been using optical, clean signal, like it a lot.

[mrock]

I use optical between DVD and AVR, as well as between my Comcast cable box and AVR.

It's my understanding that either optical or coaxial will perform equally.

My reason to use optical was that there are more optical than coaxial ports on my Denon 3805.

[gcoker]

To claifiy your connecting a CD player or a DVD player to your

receiver. If you have both connections available on your player

and receiver it really does not matter. Get which ever one is

cheaper.

[Colin]

Monster Datalink 100 vs. Radio Shack Digital Audio Cable

I purchased these two cables to connect a new CAL Gamma DAC to my Rotel CD player. Deciding on the cables was a far more difficult challenge than deciding on the DAC. I spent far more time deciding between a gray $50 Monster Datalink and an orange $15 Radio Shack Digital Audio Cable.

That decision was tough. The Radio Shack coax cable was constructed as equally well as the impressive weight and feel of the Monster one. Both had nice, firm connectors. The Monster cable seemed to have better texture to the bass and treble, less glare on the high end. The Radio Shack cable seemed to have more noticeable details, less dampened sound, possibly wider dynamic range and less subdued. It seemed more open and thinner. Since the little black box seemed to be a little less of the CD sound, I opted for the orange cable that seemed to be a little more.

Neither the change between either cable or the little DAC was significant. On a scale of one to ten, with a powerful new amplifier up near the top of the scale, I would rate this low cost improvement as only a one - down at the bottom with small improvements or tweaks. If I had an entry level CD player or receiver (less than $1000) other than a Rotel or a tube pre-amp, I would still seriously consider this inexpensive upgrade.

[j-malotky]

I have commented on this in the past, do some searches if you want a detailed answer.

In short, a coax spdif is better than a toslink optical connection, as the data transfer protocol is much simpler and was developed with a more rigid standard. Using coax will have less timing issues if any at all.

Some say Optical is better because there is less chance of a ground loop, but if that were a problem in your setup, you have a lot bigger issues to deal with IMO.

FWIW, personally, I would only use TOSLINK if I had the same manufacturer of components on each end of the fiber.

JM

[deepmukherjee]

Thanks guys. I got a coax cable from QED. Sounds good. My friend told me that he could lend me his optical cable for me to try for a few days....will let u know my opnions on that.

[GeorgeV]

I have seen and read many articles on this issue and the majority agree that Coax is superior to Toslink for sound quality. Personally I have never tried a Toslink link cable, I only use Coax cables. I did notice a large improvement in sound quality when I switched from analog cables to a Coax cables in source connections for DVD and CD players.

[colterphoto1]

If the decision is to use Coax, is there any special requirements of that cable, or will a 'normal' RCA stereo cable work? I've got a good grade cheapie connecting my DVD to Yammie and sounds fine. DOn't believe in MONSTER, should I upgrade a bit?? (not opposed to $15 RatShack, but aren't we supposed to boycott them since they sell Monster?)

Thanks,

Michael

[DrWho]

There shouldn't be any difference in quality between cables carrying digital signals. If somehow the cable is changing the 1's and 0's around, then you aren't going to be hearing any sound at all because the error correction will spit out a false value and it will keep asking the player to resend the information until it passes the error correction. If for whatever reason the bad data does get sent through the DAC in your reciever, then you are going to hear the loud heavy sound of digital distortion...you will not hear any slight differences in nuance. Keep in mind that a digital signal is not a stream of 1's and 0's that somehow correlate to the music...the data is sent in packets and even goes through the DAC in packets. I think a lot of people think of digital transfer as a stream of data correlating to the music (just like analog source), but this is however not the case. There is a buffer inside your reciever that acts like a harddrive that stores packets of data from the CD ahead of time so as to eliminate any timing issues and to give the reciever enough time to find and fix any errors that might have happened in the process.

If you want, I will go and do the research and show what changing any one bit inside the packet will do to the sound after going through the DAC. I do know that in binary, changing 101 to any of the following: 111, 110, or 001 does not equate to a difference of "1"

So if you hear a difference in sound between digital cables, then I must say you have a bad case of the placebo virus.

[Guest Anonymous]

digital co-ax can handel a larger bandwith, but a great set of analog composite cables should be able to handle a large bandwith anyways so in theory there would be no noticible difference in sound

[dougdrake]

Also, you need to consider which unit has the better DACs, your CD player or your pre-amp. If your CD player has better DACs, use the analog connection to your pre-amp/receiver and forget about the digital connection.