Coaxial v Optical

Posted by: The Meerkat on 04 July 2013

I appreciate that this topic has been aired many times before, sorry folks! However, I have just got a new nDAC which is fed with music from my Unitiserve, using a £150 Mark Grant, pure silver Coaxial interconnect. The nDAC Is then connected to my Supernait using Naim's Din cable...I then tried a cheap old optical cable that has been stuffed in a draw for ages, and connected the nDAC to the UnitiServe with the optical cable. 

 
I really could not hear any difference! But, I should have though, shouldn't I?!! Perhaps I need to get my hearing checked out!  Good quality cables do make a difference, but in my case at the moment it hasn't worked?
 
I obviously want to pull the best from my new nDAC, should I get a more expensive optical and dump the coaxial?
Posted on: 04 July 2013 by Claus-Thoegersen

How ´did you compare. 30 seconds of one track and then 30 seconds with the new cable sounds very scientific but will often not reveal anything. But if you cannot here the difference why worry, try to see if you can sell the expensive cable, and be glad you never considered being a member of the Sarum TA club.

Posted on: 04 July 2013 by The Meerkat

Thanks Claus

Posted on: 04 July 2013 by Southweststokie
Originally Posted by Claus-Thoegersen:

How ´did you compare. 30 seconds of one track and then 30 seconds with the new cable sounds very scientific but will often not reveal anything. But if you cannot here the difference why worry, try to see if you can sell the expensive cable, and be glad you never considered being a member of the Sarum TA club.

Nothing wrong with the Sarum TA club. It rocks and my wife (the moderator) totally agrees

 

Ken

Posted on: 04 July 2013 by Simon-in-Suffolk

A cheap short TOSLINK cable can be surprisingly effective. The weak link are the connectors.. And might start to show up in higher bandwidths such as with Hidef.

Simon

Posted on: 05 July 2013 by Claus-Thoegersen
Originally Posted by Southweststokie:
Originally Posted by Claus-Thoegersen:

How ´did you compare. 30 seconds of one track and then 30 seconds with the new cable sounds very scientific but will often not reveal anything. But if you cannot here the difference why worry, try to see if you can sell the expensive cable, and be glad you never considered being a member of the Sarum TA club.

Nothing wrong with the Sarum TA club. It rocks and my wife (the moderator) totally agrees

 

Not at all also a happy member, awaiting my sarum ta to go from ndac to 252, and hoping for  a good price to upgrade my current sarum old version 252 to scap and scap to scap for Snaxo. Only problem is the price!

Claus

Posted on: 05 July 2013 by likesmusic

There's a good argument that the better the DAC the less there should be a difference between optical and coax or one cable and another.  Other people argue that the better the DAC the more it reveals differences between such things. I believe in the first argument, so I would be quite delighted to find there was no difference between a cheap digital cable and and expensive one! A perfect DAC should be uninfluenced by such things. Bits should be bits! 

Posted on: 05 July 2013 by The Meerkat

Simon...I agree. I've heard this before about Toslink connections, a few people have made comments about them. If there is a problem with the connection plugs, why don't they sort it?!

Posted on: 05 July 2013 by Don Hooper

One area where toslink cables have a very important use is in surround sound when you mix floating and negative earths. All digital connections from floating earths to my AV2 are toslink. This avoids the problems with earth loops and humming. All stereo connections using digital sources use the Naim DC1 lead with excellent results. use toslink for surround sound and DC1 for stereo it works for me. 

Posted on: 05 July 2013 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Don, most guality devices use galvanic isolation on SPDIF connections to stop earth loops.

Simon

 

Posted on: 06 July 2013 by Richard Dane
Originally Posted by The Meerkat:

Simon...I agree. I've heard this before about Toslink connections, a few people have made comments about them. If there is a problem with the connection plugs, why don't they sort it?!

 

I think the design has long been set in stone and is an industry standard.  There have been attempts to get a better optical connection standard adopted (AT&T etc..)  but none gained any traction, mostly I guess because Toslink was adopted early and has the dubious advantage of being cheap.

Posted on: 06 July 2013 by Simon-in-Suffolk

Hi Meerkat, I guess as Richard says in consumer audio, there is too much momentum with TOSLINK and it is very very cheap but elsewhere in industry  there is a rich set of highly reliable and accurate fibre connectors.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/pro...aper_c11-463661.html

 

TOSLINK is a single mode of course, 

 

Simon

Posted on: 06 July 2013 by The Meerkat

Simon...I have checked out Cisco, way, way over my head! I am going to demo some opticals against my pure silver coaxial. Putting aside connection plug issues, which make stands out against the rest for sound, and build quality? My ears will obviously be the deciding factor, sound wise.

Posted on: 07 July 2013 by jobseeker
One of the biggest problems I've had with 'quality' Toslink cables is that some of them will not fit next to each other because equipment manufacturers haven't left enough space between inputs for the connectors