Bit of advice please

[Roy S]

Just got a CD player with digital outputs (thought it was about time to pension off the Pioneer I bought for £2 as part of a bundle off ebay!), which output socket is the better one to use, the co-ax or the optical? Thanks.

[Welder]

The one that sounds better prolly....;)



Sry, I'll get my coat...

[Roy S]

Good point, well made :doh:

[Reid Malenfant]

Coaxial, unless you spend silly money on a proper glass fibre Toslink. Though I still find coaxial beats it then. IMHO of course :eyebrows:

[DSJR]

Since my DAC can't stretch its neck high enough to even glance at the one Mr Malenfant is using, I'd echo Welder's comments and suggest you try it in your situation and see. Using optical means no electrical connection for rf muck etc. to fly down the screens, but it was suggested that the TosLink connectors used may be lacking. Mind you, if your player has a "clean" chassis regarding muck transmitted down the cables, you may well prefer the electrical way.

My humble lashup which, pending repair of my Micro-Seiki (fixed one problem, but careless handling has caused another on the transport's circuit board), is an old but good Denon DCD1520 heavyweight as transport (it's 2-D as a stand-alone player) into the twin-supply Digit Opto. I'm currently using a cheapo optical cable about 1mm diameter. It works, so what else am I to expect? :D

Tell you summat - after slumming it with "ordinary" CD players in recent times, I can see why so many of you dislike CD, since the sound is so often flat and bland. i can assure you that CD isn't really like that - honest guv's...........

[Roy S]

The new player is just a humble NAD C515, most of you fellas probably pay more for your interconnects than I paid for this!

Sounding fine through the co-ax at the moment but will try the optical cable as well.

Cheers.

[Reid Malenfant]

The problem with Toslink is the speed of the sender & the receiver, they just aren't fast enough. Now maybe if some kind of Async was used to retime everything then there would be no problems at all & Toslink would stand proud, or could at least :) It'd need retiming post Toslink though IMHO ;)

Galvanic isolation is already employed on many coaxial S/PDIF connections, obviously this is 100% the case on every Toslink connection.

[dave2010]

The problem with Toslink is the speed of the sender & the receiver, they just aren't fast enough. Now maybe if some kind of Async was used to retime everything then there would be no problems at all & Toslink would stand proud, or could at least :) It'd need retiming post Toslink though IMHO ;)

Galvanic isolation is already employed on many coaxial S/PDIF connections, obviously this is 100% the case on every Toslink connection.But having said that, Toslink connections often work OK, and I still think that few people can really hear the difference. Roy should try with different connections and find one he likes. We've been round this before. If there are long lengths then there are issues with both forms of connection. For short lengths I'd submit it really doesn't matter much, though a really bad cable will cause problems - and I do believe there are some - though price isn't a complete guide as I've had some costing only a few pounds which worked OK - that's IMO of course.

One issue may be if you try to send hi-res data over a link - then - as you say - optical may not be fast enough, but I don't think that applies to the case in hand. I think that's one reason why surround sound doesn't really work over Toslink - too much data from the extra channels.

[Reid Malenfant]

Aye, that makes sense as well... The thing is coaxial isn't perfect either unless it's done with proper 75 ohm impedance connections such as 75 ohm BNC connectors.

I'm going to stick my neck out on this subject again & say that the impedance mismatch between the cable & connectors effects things due to reflections (VSWR). After all we are dealing with square waves at pretty high frequencies & the integrity of the square wave edges effects the jitter induced into the system.

It might be handy if all Toslink connectors had filaments that were only a maximum of one wavelength wide or less even. The diode feeding the Toslink sprays it out in all sorts of directions, but mostly in the right general direction :eyebrows: All these off centre beams of light get reflected back & forth from side to side along the fibre & end up delayed compared to stuff that just happens to go directly down the pipe. Please remember we are not dealing with a coherent laser here! Just a cheap bit of stuff at the end of the day :eyebrows:

[Roy S]

Co-ax Cable I'm using is Mark Grant Belden 1694A, purchased from Chris (Technobear) on here. Very pleased with the sound but haven't had chance to give it the beans yet.

[Roy S]

And the answer is... no discernible difference, to me anyway. Have stuck with the co-ax. Thanks for the advice.