Fiber Optic Digital vs Coax Digital Audio?

[gbelous]

Are these connections both the same quality of sound?
What are the differences and is one better than the other to use?

[gbelous]

Are these connections both the same quality of sound?
What are the differences and is one better than the other to use?

[GMichael]

Mostly, 1's and 0's are 1's and 0's. But coax seems to be the favorite for being more durable, and the signal doesn't need to be changed from electrical to optical at one end and back at the other. Most people seem to think that this doesn't add up to much, if any, loss but some claim it does.
With all that said, I have all optical cables.

[GMichael]

Huh? deja vu?

http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=21521

[gbelous]

Okay.
The set up I'm will have is
DVD which has Optical and Coax,
Tivo which has Optical,
and PS2 which has Optical.
The dvd is what I want the best sound with, but I have no other option with my receiver. It only has 2 optical and 1 coax.
Is there anything to consider when buying a Coax cable? brand, quality..what will get the best sound?

Or am I just just being paranoid?

[GMichael]

Okay.
The set up I'm will have is
DVD which has Optical and Coax,
Tivo which has Optical,
and PS2 which has Optical.
The dvd is what I want the best sound with, but I have no other option with my receiver. It only has 2 optical and 1 coax.
Is there anything to consider when buying a Coax cable? brand, quality..what will get the best sound?

Or am I just just being paranoid?

I have optical cables running from $50 monster cables to the tiny 1/8" thick one that came with my CDR. All sound the same to me, although I do only have modest equipment compaired to others here. The biggest difference should be that the $50 cable is more durable. My $50 cable stopped working. The crappy little one still sounds fine. Go figure. I wend with Dayton Audio cables. They offer good quality at a reasonable price. Try this website.

Here for coax: http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage.cfm?webpage_id=3&SO=2&&DID=7&CATID=16&ObjectGroup_ID=599

Here for optical: http://www.partsexpress.com/webpage.cfm?webpage_id=3&SO=2&&DID=7&CATID=34&ObjectGroup_ID=151

[noddin0ff]

there you go!

[ericl]

Please don't make duplicate threads. Thank you.

your friend,
eric

[PeruvianSkies]

I used to only use Optical cables, but then I tried a Coaxial cables from White Zombie Audio and Tara Labs and noticed more improvement, not just in durability, but also in a faster response. The Optical Cable I use now is only for the Cable Box, which works fine, but my DVD player and SACD player I use the Coaxial. Alot of the Optical cables seem flimsy and often become unplugged with just an easy pull on the cable, plus they are difficult to line up when connecting, wheras the Coaxial is just a simple RCA connection.

[Dusty Chalk]

The common wisdom is that coax is better, but I don't buy it -- I've used both, and use whichever. In fact, one thing optical is good for is RF isolation -- no ground loop hum, no shielding, etc. Go ahead and use the coax, it'll be fine. I use both Hosa and Radio Shack digital cables. Here, look at this (http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2408001&cp=2032058.2032228.2032244&parentPage=family) -- 65.6 foot cable for only $40!!!1! I have no idea what you need 65 feet of digital cable for, but...it's only $40 bucks! If you want to be stingy, they have another one that's half the length for $25.

[markw]

You'll be surprised at how well it works.

[Dusty Chalk]

No, don't do that.

[markw]

No, don't do that.Works great for a digital interconnect. Trust me on this.

[noddin0ff]

Works great for a digital interconnect. Trust me on this.

yep. I agree. that's the point of digital.

[Dusty Chalk]

No, not all of them will work -- only use digital interconnects for digital interconnects. Some analog interconnects don't have the right bandwidth. The ones you two chose might have worked, but (a) I will not guarantee that it will continue to work, and (b) I will certainly not guarantee that all analog interconnects will work. Bad advice.

[markw]

No, not all of them will work -- only use digital interconnects for digital interconnects. Some analog interconnects don't have the right bandwidth. The ones you two chose might have worked, but (a) I will not guarantee that it will continue to work, and (b) I will certainly not guarantee that all analog interconnects will work. Bad advice.But, if there's one lying (laying?) around, what's it cost to try it?

FWIW, I once tried an old, yellowed and cracked audio interconnect that I since the early 60's for a digital coax and it worked just fine. I did wind up replacing it with a more modern, inexpensive "yellow plug" video cable, purely because it was utt bugly, and that too worked just fine.

So, who knows? He may get lucky and save a few $$ too.

[StevenSurprenant]

I tried several coax cables, each sounding slightly different.

I then tried an plastic optical cable and in my system, it sounded better than the coax. I then tried glass optical and it had the best transparency of all.

Each system is different and depending on your speakers and electronics you may not hear a difference or the difference may seem large depending on your point of reference.

What I find changes the most as I tweak the system in with cables is a change in transparency.

Understand that digital can only sound different if the bits are different and without error checking, that is a very possible senario.

Back in the day when I used to use separate transports and DAC's, each transport sounded different even though I would used the same DAC. When I would switch to another DAC, the difference still existed and each transport had the same sonic signature that it had with the other DAC.

The point is that, without error checking, digital audio is far from perfect. That being the case, you need to try different things and settle for what you think works best in your system.

Enjoy!

[markw]

I tried several coax cables, each sounding slightly different.Considering the very nature of a digital signal, I find this claim highly debatable from a scientific standpoint. But not from a religious one, though, so I'll just leave it at that.


Understand that digital can only sound different if the bits are different and without error checking, that is a very possible senario.

The point is that, without error checking, digital audio is far from perfect.What digital devices have you used that don't include error checking, or, more precisely, error "correction", as part of the basic package? I can't ever recall dealing with a digital system that doesn't include this.

Now had you said "ineffective" error checking/correction, I wouldn't have bothered to post this but, since you did, I'll just say that the differences you hear are more indicative of a failing within the DAC's error correction circuitry than with the interconnects themselves.

Markw (With aplolgies to Billy Joel, "Everybody's talkin' 'bout the new sound funny, but It's still ones and zeroes to me")

[StevenSurprenant]

I said error checking.

A computer uses check sums to make sure that the data retrieved from a hard drive is correct. I think that HDMI does the same, but, to my knowledge, standard digital from a cd player has no such error checking. The DAC assumes what it receives is correct and goes with it, to a point...

A CD player does incorporate error correction, but the final output can be different than what was recorded on the CD. It uses interpolation, which is in effect a guess of what it thinks the data should be. Sometimes it gets it right, sometimes it doesn't.

A computer does not guess. It is either right or wrong. If the data is wrong, the operation will stop and you will receive an error message. A music CD player will keep processing data even with errors as long as it can get enough data to perform error correction.

Mark,

What is your problem? Let me be frank. I do not buy into your concept that wire is wire. I used to until proven wrong and no, I don't need double blind tests to prove that I'm right. Yes, there are systems that sound the same no matter what wire you use, perhaps yours is one of those, but rarely do I meet anyone who cannot hear the same sonic characteristics from different wires that I hear.

You can go on believing that wire is wire, I couldn't care less. There is nothing that you have ever said that would make me change my mind. I too am very sceptical of certain claims in audio, but I don't get on peoples backs about it. I don't see what purpose it serves. Why would I want to rain on their parade if they are having fun?

The only people I've ever said anything about are the ones that make it a point to be obnoxious. There are other people on this forum that say wire doesn't matter and they leave it at that. They don't make it a big issue. If that's what they believe and that's fine. For some people their advice is good.

Look, I know that your feathers are all ruffled now and you're going to pick this posting apart to prove your point, but just relax and let us enjoy ourselves. This is not a personal issue.

The end...

[royphil345]

I tried several coax cables, each sounding slightly different.

I then tried an plastic optical cable and in my system, it sounded better than the coax. I then tried glass optical and it had the best transparency of all.

Enjoy!


I have to pretty much agree with that. I know it doesn't make much sense...

I've definitely heard an improvement switching from a plastic optical cable to an inexpensive glass one off eBay.

I was just playing around yesterday with switching the coax cable between my new M-Audio Audiophile and my receiver. It sounded great at first when I had it temporarily hooked up with a yellow-tipped video cable I had lying around. I switched it to a new Acoustic Research digital audio cable just for the heck of it and the sound got very noticeably thinner. I don't know which one is "better". I know they sound different though. Believe it or not...

Right now I'm thinking the old video cable sounds better. Might be a case of cheap, thin conductors in the Acoustic Research cable. I've never cared much for their anolog cables for that reason. Figured it wouldn't matter with digital...

[StevenSurprenant]

My system is mainly digital. I use glass optical from my DVD player to my Digital equalizer and a cheap balanced digital cable to my Digital electronic crossover. From there it outputs analog to my digital receiver where it is reconverted back into digital. That is the only analog circuit in the system. I am running DH Labs Q10 to the tweeters and DH Labs Air Matrix on the analog side of my tweeter. The bass side of my system is zip cord and Nordost Blue Heaven. By the way, DH Labs made a significant improvement in the clarity. I have a balanced DH Labs 110 cable coming in the mail to replace the cheap digital cable that I am now using. I have high hopes, but the proof is in the using. More than once have cheaper cables been the better alternative.

If you are interested, I'll let you know the results. Later I will be trying different cables on the bass side.

My speakers are homemade based on the Newform Research R645 tweeter.

I've also owed B&W and Quad ESL. The present system has the greatest clarity, but the Quads had the best midrange.

My present system is relative inexpensive compared to the Quad system, but it is still impressive for what it is.


Take care...

[markw]

I said error checking.

A computer uses check sums to make sure that the data retrieved from a hard drive is correct. I think that HDMI does the same, but, to my knowledge, standard digital from a cd player has no such error checking. The DAC assumes what it receives is correct and goes with it, to a point...

A CD player does incorporate error correction, but the final output can be different than what was recorded on the CD. It uses interpolation, which is in effect a guess of what it thinks the data should be. Sometimes it gets it right, sometimes it doesn't.

A computer does not guess. It is either right or wrong. If the data is wrong, the operation will stop and you will receive an error message. A music CD player will keep processing data even with errors as long as it can get enough data to perform error correction.

Mark,

What is your problem? Let me be frank. I do not buy into your concept that wire is wire. I used to until proven wrong and no, I don't need double blind tests to prove that I'm right. Yes, there are systems that sound the same no matter what wire you use, perhaps yours is one of those, but rarely do I meet anyone who cannot hear the same sonic characteristics from different wires that I hear.

You can go on believing that wire is wire, I couldn't care less. There is nothing that you have ever said that would make me change my mind. I too am very sceptical of certain claims in audio, but I don't get on peoples backs about it. I don't see what purpose it serves. Why would I want to rain on their parade if they are having fun?

The only people I've ever said anything about are the ones that make it a point to be obnoxious. There are other people on this forum that say wire doesn't matter and they leave it at that. They don't make it a big issue. If that's what they believe and that's fine. For some people their advice is good.

Look, I know that your feathers are all ruffled now and you're going to pick this posting apart to prove your point, but just relax and let us enjoy ourselves. This is not a personal issue.

The end......Is that you've chosen to ignore totally the fine explanation Hermanv provided for you. That's my issue with many people. When presented with harfdfacts to refute their "beliefs", they choose to ignore them and rely on "I believe what the voices in my head tell me".

In the mean time instead of prolestyzing your beliefs here, perhaps you should finalize that other thread where Hermanv politely and efficiently set you straight and you went a-running, tail between your legs.

Now, you can posture all you want but, in the end, logic and science are against you. You hear what you want to hear and, maybe, just maybe, whatever differences you attribute to your cables just might be the resut if various biophysical reactions, such as blood pressure, mood, barometric pressure, moisture in the air, air temperature,and, last but not least, hearing only what you want to hear.

Now if you wish to admit that you have a faulty DAC that's incapable of doing the same job as a $40 disc drive, then we'll talk.

In the meantime, just get used to the terrorists here but, just to keep even, my listening experiences so far have proven my beliefs.

[royphil345]

Now if you wish to admit that you have a faulty DAC that's incapable of doing the same job as a $40 disc drive, then we'll talk.


From what I've gathered... The $40.00 disk drive uses a cache and can attempt to correct any errors by re-reading the disk. Audio equipment can only "correct" errors by replacing any missing information with a "guess". Could be totally wrong here... Not sure...

What's that got to do with the possibility of a cable increasing or decreasing the number of errors between a transport and DAC anyway? I'm telling you... I heard an obvious difference between two digital coax cables just yesterday. I could probably even figure out a way to record wave files of the same sample using the two cables so you could hear the difference for yourself.

[markw]

From what I've gathered... The $40.00 disk drive uses a cache and can attempt to correct any errors by re-reading the disk. Audio equipment can only "correct" errors by replacing any missing information with a "guess". Could be totally wrong here... Not sure...

What's that got to do with the possibility of a cable increasing or decreasing the number of errors between a transport and DAC anyway? I'm telling you... I heard an obvious difference between two digital coax cables just yesterday. I could probably even figure out a way to record wave files of the same sample using the two cables so you could hear the difference for yourself.Again, it's possibly your DAC isn't handling the errors properly. For more on this, see the last page of this thread. Post 91 is where Herman goes into it a bit and Steve just humbly walks away with nothing to say,at least until this thread. Granted, that was in response to a toslink cable but, with digital , ones is ones and zeroes is zeroes and error correction is the same, as it's all done in the electronic, not optical, realm. As for my attitude towards Steve, see post 81 for his auspicious re-enterance here.

http://forums.audioreview.com/showthread.php?t=12017

[royphil345]

I don't think it would be a matter of the error handling of the DAC. Like I said... With a standard transport and DAC... Any error will result in a "digital band-aid" being applied. No real recovery of missing / corrupt information is possible. So, the more errors you have between a transport and DAC... the worse the sound will be, no matter how well the error correction is working.

It may be a case of my equipment being so crappy that the sending and reading of the digital information isn't perfect, and that different cables can actually make some small difference in the number of errors. That's what I would have to believe... And if it's true in my system, it may be a factor in others as well. I swear the difference I heard was beyond anything imagined.

[Feanor]

No, not all of them will work -- only use digital interconnects for digital interconnects. Some analog interconnects don't have the right bandwidth. The ones you two chose might have worked, but (a) I will not guarantee that it will continue to work, and (b) I will certainly not guarantee that all analog interconnects will work. Bad advice.

Check out Blue Jeans Cable for highly cost effective cabling with out the hype.

http://www.bluejeanscable.com/
You will note that Blues Jeans sell you exactly the same same Belden cable and connectors for digital coax as for analog. They do recommend the more heavily shielded but less flexible cable for digital, however there is not bandwidth problem in either case. For that matter, any old composite video cable you have lying around has the bandwidth for digital, assuming it works with your TV.

[Dusty Chalk]

Video is different -- I will fully agree that any video cable will work as a digital interconnect. But I will stand by my stance that analog audio interconnects are not interchangeable with digital interconnects.

[markw]

Video is different -- I will fully agree that any video cable will work as a digital interconnect. But I will stand by my stance that analog audio interconnects are not interchangeable with digital interconnects.I've got a cracked, brittle, yellowed interconnect form the eary 60's that says you're wrong.

I will go as far as saying that the common denominator just might be "75 ohms" but, then again, I doubt my antique is.

I think that for short digital runs the cable is not all that critical.

[StevenSurprenant]

When Signals Go Bad

One of the interesting distinctions between digital and analog signals is that they degrade in rather different ways. Both are electrical signals, carried by a stream of electrons in a wire, and so both are subject to alteration by the electrical characteristics of the cable and by the intrusion of outside electrical noise. But while the alteration of an analog waveform is progressive and continuous--the more noise is introduced, the more noise will come out of our speaker along with the tone--the digital signal suffers alteration quite differently.

First, a digital signal, because of its sharp transitions, is highly subject to degradation in its waveform; those sharp transitions are equivalent to a long--indeed, an infinite--series of harmonics of the base frequency, and the higher the frequency of the signal, the more transmission line effects, such as the characteristic impedance of the cable, and resulting signal reflections ("return loss") come into play. This means that while the signal may originate as a square wave, it never quite arrives as one. Depending on the characteristic impedance of the cable, the capacitance of the cable, and the impedance match between the source and load devices, the corners of the square wave will round off to a greater or lesser degree, and the "flat" portions of the wave will become uneven as well. This makes it harder for the receiving circuit to accurately identify the transitions and thereby clock the incoming signal (causing the phenomenon known as "jitter"). The more degradation in the signal, the harder it is for the receiving device to accurately measure the content of the bitstream.

Second, a digital signal, because of the way its information is contained, can be quite robust. While the signal will always degrade to some degree in the cable, if the receiving circuit can actually reconstitute the original bitstream, reception of the signal will be, in the end analysis, perfect. No matter how much jitter, how much rounding of the shoulders of the square wave, or how much noise, if the bitstream is accurately reconstituted at the receiving end, the result is as though there'd been no degradation of signal at all.

One note: it's often assumed that SPDIF digital audio, or DVI digital video, employ error correction. Because these formats are meant to deliver content in real time, however, they can't employ error correction; there's no time to re-send data packets which aren't correctly received. So when digital data are lost, the loss is final. Depending on what is lost, this may result in an interpolation (to "guess" the content of the missing data), an error (where data are misread and the erroneous content is rendered in place of the correct content), or a total failure (where the signal may disappear entirely for a period of time).


http://forum.ecoustics.com/bbs/messages/34579/125179.html

[PeruvianSkies]

Not to add more debate to this thread, but has anyone else experienced the difference between gold and silver cables? I switched over about a year ago to WhiteZombie Audio cables, which are pure Silver cables and I noticed a huge improvement over my previous cables, which were a variety: Monster, Audioquest, Tributaries, etc. To me, the Silver cables sounded more realistic and did not add any coloration to the material.

[musicman1999]

I tried a set of kimber silver streak interconnects and found them far to bright for my liking.Silver cables,like any cable,are very system dependant.If you system leans toward the bright side,silver cables will bring that much further out.

bill

[Dusty Chalk]

My favourite cables that I have (Quartets from Pure Silver Sound) are silver. I've heard gold ones, but I don't think I could tell the difference. I need to find silver cables pseudo-shielded with copper. I think copper will be fine for the pseudo shielding, while silver should be used for the conducter. Does anyone know of such a beast?

[StevenSurprenant]

I got my new DH Labs D110 digital interconnects and they are great. Imaging, sound stage, and micro detail all improved, I'm keeping them in the system.Now I will start working on the bass side of my system.