Results 1 to 11 of 11
  1. #1
    Forum Regular
    Join Date
    Feb 2004
    Posts
    150

    Bettercables digital coax vs. Monster THX optical?

    I was looking in to swapping out my Monster THX optical cables for Bettercable silver serpant digital coaxial. Is there going to be a difference in sound?

  2. #2
    Suspended markw's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    Noo Joisey. Youse got a problem wit dat?
    Posts
    4,659

    At least as good. A repost from a similar question.

    "When the electrical/optical converter in the source is up to snuff, the best glass (not plastic as is common) is used for the toslink cable, the connectors on both ends are firmly and securely inserted into both the source and receiver in such a manner as to maximize the light transfer, and there are no great bends in the toskink itself, and the receiver's optical/electrical converter is up to snuff, the optical path can be just as good as that of a cheap 75 ohm coaxal interconnect."

    "It's beyond me why they don't put more coaxial connectors and less optical connectors into this equipment. They ain't doin' us any favors, believe me."

    Actually, any well made (I didn't say fancy or expensive, mind you) 75 ohm coax should work fine. No need to spring for the high priced spread unless spending more money for no performance gain is your bag.

  3. #3
    Forum Regular royphil345's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Posts
    709
    I'm not sure if the Monster THX is glass or not. If not, I'm guessing the coax will sound better. If it is, it'll be a close contest. I still favor the coax, use glass cables where it's the only option. There is no benefit from a pricey coax.

  4. #4
    Big science. Hallelujah. noddin0ff's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    X
    Posts
    2,286
    The whole point of a digital signal is to make the signal robust enough to deliver even when transmission is less than optimal. A digital signal is many times more robust than an ANALOG signa (like what goes to your speakers), which may be impacted by better cables, maybe not. Pretty much all modern communication is digital and doesn't require fancy silver cables for flawless transmission. The digital signal is a series of ONs and OFFs, a bitstream of 1's and 0's. It really doesn't matter what the cable is. You would have to degrade the signal substantially for it not to work. As long as the 1's and 0's are delivered you will not hear a difference in sound. I suppose optical cables have a potential for greater bandwidth, but that potential is not used or needed now. The DAC's are where the sound comes from. If you want better sound look at what is doing the decoding and everything down stream.

  5. #5
    Forum Regular royphil345's Avatar
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Posts
    709
    I mostly agree with that. My coax digital cable is nothing fancy at all. My glass toslink is nothing fancy either.

    I absolutely hear a night and day difference between my plastic and glass toslinks though. (although it doesn't sound any better than the cheap coax to me) Just about everyone who tries a glass toslink agrees. My guess is that the plastic ones just don't work like they're supposed to. Probably why toslink connections got a bad name with many audiophiles.

    One possible reason I heard for this that might make some sense is that the glass cables are much thinner, keeping a better focus when light reflects off the inner walls of the cable.

    http://stores.ebay.com/24-7-MINIDISCS

  6. #6
    The Buzz
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Van Nuys, CA
    Posts
    6
    Actually glass has a different refraction index than plastic does. Have you ever seen clear plastic that was truly "clear" when compared to glass?

    A digital coaxial cable is generally the better way to go if you have available inputs on your AVR, but a high quality optical audio cable with glass fibers AND lenses will work just as well.

  7. #7
    Big science. Hallelujah. noddin0ff's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2004
    Location
    X
    Posts
    2,286
    Quote Originally Posted by Mansquito
    Actually glass has a different refraction index than plastic does. Have you ever seen clear plastic that was truly "clear" when compared to glass?

    A digital coaxial cable is generally the better way to go if you have available inputs on your AVR, but a high quality optical audio cable with glass fibers AND lenses will work just as well.
    Last I checked, refractive index doesn't have anything to do with clarity. It has to do with how much light will slow or bend as it goes from one medium to another. Water, Glass, and Diamonds are all clear with different indexes. Clarity is just clarity. The refractive index does impact the critical angle for total internal reflection. Maybe you're thinking of that. Either way these optical indices don't effect the transmission of a digital signal much, if at all, for a short optical cable. No information is lost due to refraction.

  8. #8
    The Buzz
    Join Date
    Mar 2005
    Location
    Van Nuys, CA
    Posts
    6
    I know what the refractive index is and means...and maybe I should have been more clear about what I meant. The main problem with Toslink is jitter. As you may know, a digital signal is a square wave. Jitter would stretch or compress these "squares", thereby causing those bits to be lost or misinterpereted by the receiving device.

    Toslink works by having a light pulse on and off many times per second - remember that it takes time for the night to become fully "on" and fully "off", which not only limits effective bandwidth, but also increases the chance of jitter. Toslink has come a long way, but if you rewind back to the time when it was first deployed, it was unilaterally slammed as being an inferior interface for this reason.

    Modern devices "hide" jitter by using interpolation algorithms on buffered data. A dramatic example of this would be your digital cell phone dynamically adjusting the bit rate of the audio codec based on the signal strength. At higher bitrates, people sound much clearer than they do at reduced bitrates. If all you ever heard was the reduced bitrate, you may believe that is as good as it will get...never considering that there was a way to get the full bitrate for sound with a much wider dynamic range.

    I'm not trying to overstate the need for a quality digital or optical cable, but I think a lot of people carelessly write off cables as being some huge scam designed to bleed them dry of their money. I can't deny that there are cables that I'd call a scam, and that is where the individual needs to do his or her due diligence. Chances are, once you buy your cables, you won't be buying them again for some time to come, so you might as well make them an investment rather than a liability. Even if the difference is slight, it's worth it to me, because I know that I will be enjoying my equipment to the fullest.

  9. #9
    Forum Regular
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Posts
    727
    Quote Originally Posted by Mansquito
    I know what the refractive index is and means...and maybe I should have been more clear about what I meant. The main problem with Toslink is jitter. As you may know, a digital signal is a square wave. Jitter would stretch or compress these "squares", thereby causing those bits to be lost or misinterpereted by the receiving device.

    Toslink works by having a light pulse on and off many times per second - remember that it takes time for the night to become fully "on" and fully "off", which not only limits effective bandwidth, but also increases the chance of jitter. Toslink has come a long way, but if you rewind back to the time when it was first deployed, it was unilaterally slammed as being an inferior interface for this reason.

    Modern devices "hide" jitter by using interpolation algorithms on buffered data. A dramatic example of this would be your digital cell phone dynamically adjusting the bit rate of the audio codec based on the signal strength. At higher bitrates, people sound much clearer than they do at reduced bitrates. If all you ever heard was the reduced bitrate, you may believe that is as good as it will get...never considering that there was a way to get the full bitrate for sound with a much wider dynamic range.

    I'm not trying to overstate the need for a quality digital or optical cable, but I think a lot of people carelessly write off cables as being some huge scam designed to bleed them dry of their money. I can't deny that there are cables that I'd call a scam, and that is where the individual needs to do his or her due diligence. Chances are, once you buy your cables, you won't be buying them again for some time to come, so you might as well make them an investment rather than a liability. Even if the difference is slight, it's worth it to me, because I know that I will be enjoying my equipment to the fullest.
    As one who has heard the benefits of quality audio cables, I was surprised to learn that I could not tell one digital coax cables sound from another. OTOH, the couple of toslink cables I used were noticeably worse sounding. I went with coax many years ago and haven't tried toslink since.

  10. #10
    AR Newbie Registered Member
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Posts
    1

    bettercable vs. monster

    I,ve tried coax from Radio Shack, Monster , Bettercables, and Cobalt.Bettercables is the best sounding of the bunch so far.It sounds smoother w/articulate bass, fuller mids and slightly recessed highs. I need a longer cable and thinking of trying the new Outlaw Audio PSC digital coax.I'm using there S-video for Direct tv and picture is amazing for s-video.They are suppose to have the best optical cable around for just $30.

  11. #11
    Forum Regular hermanv's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2004
    Location
    Santa Rosa, CA
    Posts
    968

    Cable time smear or jitter

    A CD digital signal provides one of 65,536 posible levels between 0 and 2V. Visualize a piece of graph paper. The output filter "connects the dots" to make an anlog waveform. It seems obvious that to have each dot be in the exact right spot, both voltage and time must be equally correct to 1 part in 65,000.

    Plastic optical cables have poor edge speeds because of the differential refraction so the decoder ends up misplacing the dots in time. If you run a plastic optical cable through a jitter reduction box suddenly the plastic sounds as good as the glass or the coax. Note that some D to A's do a better job of jitter eduction than others possibly masking this effect in your home equipment.

    Since coax is cheaper than glass fiber and cheaper than a jitter reduction box, stick with coax. I agree that the quality of the coax should have no effect. It is possible that the bit error rate is affected by cables below some quality point and this would affect the sound but even cheap coax has bandwidths approaching a Gigahertz which equates to a rise time of 1 nanosecond.

    What is unknown is whether the output driver in the player/transport has both enough oomph to drive a 75 Ohm load cleanly and the correct launch impedance to prevent reflections. This isn't veryt hard to do but you would be surprised by the number of designers that don't get it.

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. BNC in place of digital coax?
    By scotym in forum Cables
    Replies: 5
    Last Post: 01-11-2005, 10:27 AM
  2. digital coax cable
    By rajman in forum Cables
    Replies: 3
    Last Post: 10-27-2004, 09:23 PM
  3. digital coax or normal RCA
    By Lafferman in forum Cables
    Replies: 8
    Last Post: 06-21-2004, 08:11 PM
  4. coax digital vs coax analog
    By sq73 in forum Cables
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 03-14-2004, 08:09 PM
  5. Converting Optical to RCA Type Digital
    By gburglax in forum Home Theater/Video
    Replies: 2
    Last Post: 01-07-2004, 06:39 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •