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[Griff]

Optical vrs. Wired.

Anyone, know of a sound quality Diff., between these two ?

Thanks

Griff

[LesC]

i prefer s/pdif. the difference between the two would go into the brand/model.. etc.

[phsingl]

some people think that optical introduces the potential for jitter - consensus is that if you go optical then you need to make sure you have a decent glass fiber cable & keep the run reasonably short (i.e. less than 10 feet).

On the other hand a coax connection is going to electrically anchor your 'noisy' pc to your processor/amp, which may introduce ground loops and or other unwanted problems...

I've used both but settled on coax (1M) with a M-Audio Audiophile 192 card in the PC and m-audio's ASIO drivers. PC and Processor & amps are all on the same circuit with a Tripp Lite 3100 power conditioner. I've had no noise issues with the coax connection.

[avpman]

some people think that optical introduces the potential for jitter - consensus is that if you go optical then you need to make sure you have a decent glass fiber cable & keep the run reasonably short (i.e. less than 10 feet).

On the other hand a coax connection is going to electrically anchor your 'noisy' pc to your processor/amp, which may introduce ground loops and or other unwanted problems...

I've used both but settled on coax (1M) with a M-Audio Audiophile 192 card in the PC and m-audio's ASIO drivers. PC and Processor & amps are all on the same circuit with a Tripp Lite 3100 power conditioner. I've had no noise issues with the coax connection.

Hi,
I have the same M-Audio card and setup as. Have you been able to properly play DTS files through it? I finally got mine working but I get about .25 seconds of hiss at the beginning of each DTS track before the M-192 automatically switches to DTS (Data) mode. M-Audio's tech support was useless, they told me to try another digital processor. But I just don't have another few thousand dollars lying around to try that.
Jim

[phsingl]

Hi,
I have the same M-Audio card and setup as. Have you been able to properly play DTS files through it? I finally got mine working but I get about .25 seconds of hiss at the beginning of each DTS track before the M-192 automatically switches to DTS (Data) mode. M-Audio's tech support was useless, they told me to try another digital processor. But I just don't have another few thousand dollars lying around to try that.
Jim

Jim
I've only just switched to this setup from an optically based connection (it didn't support ASIO and was causing issues with kernel streaming hence I moved to the M-audio card). I was reading through some of the threads over the weekend (whilst re-encoding 500+ CDs in .ape lossless!) and it seems there are a number of tweaks required to get DTS playback. I also have about 25 movies ripped to .VOB so I'll probably start on that once I've got the audio side of the equation complete.
cheers, Paul.

[MerlinWerks]

I also believe there is a bandwidth limitation with most s/pdif toslink connections.

toslink = 96khz max
coax = 192khz max