digital coax or digital optical ????

[love_hertz]

Which one do you guys recommend to use for home theatre use? I am thinking of using the "Better Cables" name brand?

[PhilMays]

I like the optical connection myself. Others may have a different opinion though.

[TheEAR]

I always used and use coax. Optical interconnects are more often then not less costly,and perform well. Your choice here.

[erickoegle]

I've used both, and really do not have a preference. Just remember, with the digital optical there are plastic and glass, obviously glass is more expensive and less likely to interfere with any other components to produce static. If you do go with digital optical, get one that contains a lot of insulation to contain the quality you are looking for.

[damonrpayne]

With a digital signal with error correction, jitter correction, and checksums built into the protocols, it should not matter!

[MrMcGoo]

The better choice is usually coax due to its being more difficult to break. However, coax can cause a ground loop while Toslink cannot cause a ground loop. Both suffer from jitter to some extent. I.link (firewire) is the best connection, but it is rarely used.

Bill

[love_hertz]

thanks for your opinions, in previous systems I had always used optical. I am willing to try something new. I may go with coax this time, due to the fact that it cant be broken!

[capo72]

Here is my take. The digital signal is just a tiny electrical signal traveling through the metal traces on the circut boards in side your source. Digital coax is a metal cable, where as optical is plastic, or glass. In order to use optical the tiny electrical signal has to be converted to light in a tiny little converter about the size of a sugar cube. Then after it travels through the optical cable it has to get converted back to an electrical signal again. So my opinion is why go from electric to light back to electric again, when you can go electric, electric, electric with digital coax. Also the durability issues need to be considered as mentioned before. I don't think there is any noticeable difference in quality of signal transfer, it just comes down to cost, durability, and Rf issues. Oh yeah, I think those Toslink connectors suck compared to RCA. Did I make any sense? These are purely my opinions, so feel free to disagree.

Jeremy

[DrWho]

The advantage to optical is that there is no electrical connection between devices, which cuts down on the noise floor due to ground loop issues. Optical is more often used in the studio where this is a bigger issue than the home where you have far less equipment and a higher noise floor that masks it anyway.

[psg]

I used to use optical (it was new and cool I suppose) and switched to coax for my DVD a very simple reason: It's the default setting for the DVD input on my receiver. So if the receiver loses its settings, at least the receiver will still get sound from the DVD player. Sounds stupid, I know. But I did this change after I spent 10 minutes on the phone with my wife, navigating her through menus to change the DVD input. This was during one of my many field-work trips.

I still use optical for sat TV.

[Cal Blacksmith]

I use both, ................. AT the SAME TIME[]

I have the output from the HTPC use coax to the receiver and the DVD player use

optical. This eases the confusion for the wife when she uses the system as both

sources use the same setting on the receiver, DVD. As only one source is on at

a time, there is no problem. I prefer to watch using the HTPC as the source and

for ease of use for the wife, she uses the DVD player. The Video is switched at

the projector, component for the DVD player and PC for the HTPC.

There is no difference in the quality of the audio that I

can detect.

[Petrol]

I have used both and couldn't tell a differance so I just use what I have on hand