Digital leads - Coax or Optical? Opinions?

[Marcw]

Ayup!

I tried a little experiment last night with my setup and I'm not sure whether the result is wishful thinking or if it made an audible difference.

I'd been connecting my Sony 715 player to my Yammy DDP2 DD decoder using an old optical fibre cable I got for about 15 quid from Maplin ages ago (before I knew any better, before you start!).

I changed the cable over to a good quality coax cable to see if it would cure sound dropouts I occasionally get. It didn't, seems to be my player (good old Techtronics want nothing to do with it so it looks like an upgrade is nigh... Anyway... ) but it had another effect...

My DD sound appears to be clearer, fuller and separation between channels seems to have improved so - is it me, or is coax audibly better than optical? Any opinions, experiences?

Cheers,

Marcw.

[Just]

Most people (including bods in high end tests etc) seem to be agreed that Coax is a superior method of connecting digital equipment than Optical leads. However, whether it makes an obvious audible difference is very debatable - sounds (haha) like it works for you though.

[Ron Hill]

It seems to me that optical connection involves an extra encoder and decoder at both ends of the cable i.e. electrical to optical and back again.

Coaxial will not have this extra encoding and decoding from/to optical therefore it would seem to me be a better approach from a signal processing point of view. Fewer cooks if you will. :)

Once the bits are in transit i'd imagine that their isn't much in it. A digital signal after all is there or it isn't. Hence the cheap coaxial is as good as expensive coaxial argument.

[tezmo]

dude, a digital signal is a digital signal is a digital signal, so if there are any imperfections in it, they will be manifested as clicks and pops (like a bad digital cd audio extraction if youve ever tried it)..........so, since optical is a non error-corrected bitstream any imperfections etc in the lead will introduce distortion to the sound.......coaxial however is packet based and error corrected so a coat hanger is as good as the ninety quid coax from richer sounds - coax would always be my connection method of choice - so sorry but i reckon you were imagining things if you thought you could hear that one was better than the other - it would have been pops not spatialisation manifestation :)

[Marcw]

So by changing to coax from optical I've just decreased the chances of data errors on my DD signal, yes? Well, that's got to be a good thing hasn't it? :D

[f_drew]

Originally posted by Marcw
So by changing to coax from optical I've just decreased the chances of data errors on my DD signal, yes? Well, that's got to be a good thing hasn't it? :D

I was on the understanding that it was the PCM signal that was 'improved' by using a Coax rather than optical cables. When sending Dolby or DTS signals down the cable tezmo is perfectly correct. Digital packet based systems.

As far as I know any phono-phono cable could be used but it is alleged that the 75ohm cables prevent signal 'echo'. Dunno how true that is though ....

I wouldn't have thought that there was any significant 'improvement' with regard to preventing signal dropouts unless you're bending the cable through 90 degrees which optical signals don't like too much !

Now where's MikeK .....