Squeezebox and toslink

[Yomanze]

The "Even better" trace seems to have a bit of overshoot and possibly ringing, which could possibly confuse recievers more that the normal eye pattern.

Yes I noticed this too & I could see a reflection in the signal, thought it might be a camera artifact. Nearly edited my post to say the Sony eyepattern could be better but didn't bother.

I'd think both are better than the Toslink though.

[dave2010]

I repeat that if these are traces of a digital modulated signal that there may not be a problem with any of these. The Manchester differential encoding used is self clocking, so there shouldn't be a major problem with jitter. I'm not a circuit designer though, so I can't say for sure that all circuits would work, but I'd expect the receiver to sample and threshold the signal about half way through the bit period in order to determine whether the transmitted data was a zero or a one. A circuit which samples and thresholds too early could perhaps get confused with the Toslink data, but it still seems unlikely.

I agree that the "better" signal seems to have a better square wave, but for a digital signal this should not matter.

[icehockeyboy]

Just replaced my fairly decent QED opti cable with a coax that I believe Stanley B sent when I first bought a dac from him, mind you it might have been from someone else, I recall buying one that was the "flavour of the month" from Bristol way I think, anyhows, whilst I was behind the rack fiddling with cable, I asked my daughter to just tell me which one sounded better in her opinion, and she chose the coax, saying it just seemed slightly clearer, this was done a fair few times by the way, and I have to say, from my usual listening position, it does have the edge over the QED opti, despite what I had read how using an opti has benefits over a coax when fed into a dac. (Please don't ask what they were.....possibly to do with jitter?)

[pcourtney]

if you want a more technical side - with measurements and using the Triode EDO plugin and it kinda refutes what Lukas says (from Lampizator)

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2013/0...transport.html

What I find impressive here is the fact that TosLink to the Essence 1 worked at 24/192!!! In fact, that picture of the Touch in the previous post playing the 24/192 John Coltrane's "Blue Train" (Classic Records HDAD release from 2001) was through the TosLink (you can see the 192kHz LED lit up on the Essence 1). This is why I'm very impressed by the components used in the Touch; kudos to Logitech and ASUS! Over the years, this is the first time I've been able to play 24/192 for hours without obvious clicks/pops/disruptions even with a cheap plastic cable


Conclusion:
1. Thanks again to Triode for the EDO plugin/kernel. It works beautifully and in my system with TosLink working, the Touch measures within 1-2 dB in terms of noise level, dynamic range, and stereo crosstalk compared to a direct USB connection to the DAC for 24/192 playback!

2. If you can get the TosLink to work, you've set yourself free from electrical noise with "galvanic isolation" of the Touch and DAC. Again, the fact that I could get TosLink 24/192 to work reliably between the Touch and Essence One really is impressive and speaks well of the equipment.

3. A recurring theme in these tests is that of ELECTRICAL NOISE. Coaxial SPDIF cables need good shielding at 24/192!

4. 24/192 does not measure as well in my system as 24/96. Writers like Lavry and xiph.org ("24/192 Music Downloads Make No Sense") have already eloquently documented their opinions against 24/192 and I guess I can echo their concerns with the gear I'm using for these tests... Firstly, between 24/96 and 24/192, the difference is ultrasonic; do we demand high-end SLR digital cameras to also capture ultraviolet light? (Sure, you might want to do this for specific scientific reasons.) Secondly, other than a handful of albums usually from smaller labels like 2L, Reference and Linn, I have rarely come across truly native 24/192 (or 24/176) recordings. IMO, it also makes no sense to buy stuff like DSD64 converted to 24/176 such as many of the HDTracks offers.