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USB or coaxial on Raspberry PI?

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akira54:
I am running MC22 on a Raspberry PI3 using a USB connection to the dac. I am quite impressed with the sound but are there limitations I should be aware of, particularly with respect to playing HD sound? Will a coaxial connection provide better sound (HiFiBerry). Any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated.

akira54:
No one?

JimH:
USB is fine.

mwillems:
I've never used coaxial output on a raspberry pi, but, in general, coaxial SPDIF is a less desirable transfer medium than USB.  SPDIF has limited bandwidth (so cannot handle multichannel or hi-res without lossy compression), is more susceptible to jitter, and (unlike toslink) doesn't provide any better electrical isolation.  Unless you already own a particularly nice DAC that only accepts SPDIF inputs, I can think of no technical reasons to prefer SPDIF over well-behaved USB outputs.

akira54:
Thanks, that puts my mind at ease.

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