Optical Link recommendatons?

Interesting, Gary. I'm *also* looking for a new optical cable to connect my Sony 333ES CD player to my MSB DAC. Let me know what you come up with. I've been using a cheapo up to now with the intention of upgrading. Hmmm. It's been two years and never got around to the upgrade.

Oh, BTW, I'm going to upgrade the DAC to a Benchmark very shortly. Will give you the results when I get it [in about three weeks].

 

Hey Gary. I haven't looked too much into optical (I prefer coaxial), but I've heard only good things about AudioQuest Opti-Links.

 

I'm using an Audio One Toslink between my Sony XA20ES transport and MSB Goldlink MKIII DAC. This cable is superior to AR, Kimber, and XLO. The soundstage is wider, deeper, and the Audio One resolves much more low level detail than the other three. The highs exhbit much less grain too. However, I doubt the Audio One uses real glass fiber optics. I only paid around $100.- for it.

 

Interesting.
I actually thought all optical cables would sound the same. just 1's and 0's.
I did buy the Tributaries since that is what my local high end shop sells.
He said the ends are polished and it will sound better.

I am only using digital for movies to a inexpensive Onkyo 5.1 receiver.
My bigger system 5.1 was purchased before optical was available.

 

Very nice choice. I'm doing the same thing.

Sorry for the interruption. Now back to the thread.

 

Optical cables totally isolate the components from each other. Coax can inject some ground problems, although I've never experienced this.

I know on ADATs they call the light pipes "jitter pipes". I guess they measured the jitter at an AES convention and saw it was horrible through the optical cables. It got worse when they connected the master controller (remote). Don't know if this applies to regular S/PDIF connections as the ADAT light pipe is an 8 channel format.

 

As with other things digital, in theory cables, whether optical or digital, should sound the same. If you are hooking up two perfect devices, they probably do. In the real world your mileage may vary.

I recently bought an Audio Alchemy DAC in the Box. I started out with an RCA digital coax cable from Radio Shack (it was available and didn't cost more than the DAC!) Sounded OK. Then I switched to a Toslink connector, one that came with an old Panasonic CD player. Rather to my surprise, this seemed to sound better. But it's early days yet.

 

It's a professional audio format that uses consumer optical cables to pass 8 channels of digital audio. We (the recording engineers that give a crap) fear and avoid these connections. You can often find us taunting them and making fun of their emaciated appearance.

Seriously though, it's quite common on many digital multi tracks (Pro Tools, RADAR, ADATS, etc...) but has never been known for it's pristine audio qualities.

I don't know all the technical differences between ADAT light pipes and S/PDIF but there are certainly jitter problems in the pro audio world when transferring things this way. There's no word clock and things are sync'd using only the digital audio. That scares me a little.

Did that help or just confuse? I'll go away now.

 

The only thing that has an optical output for optical link connections that I have is the MiniDisc/CD combo deck but everything else uses RCA cables. RCAs go a long ways with me.

 

Gary, did you audition a cheapo along with the others you've mentioned? I noticed no difference between the cheapo I'm using with an expensive Optilink 4. I'm really of a mind now that it really *is* just 1s and 0s afterall. Also, from all that I've read, there is *no* real advantage to coax. Don't be too quick to upgrade the MSB just yet!!

 

And yes, my MD/CD combo deck has RCA outputs as well.

 

I'm choking a bit on the suggestion that the ADAT light pipe is "professional."

There are two generations of both TosLink transceivers and digital interface chips so generalizations are meaningless at this point. Toslink does break ground loops which can improve the sound of badly designed products. Early generation chips were also seriously flawed leading people to think Toslink its self was an inferior interface. Swapping in the latest digital interface chips could make some pretty big improvements in a lot of older digital gear.

Monster actually makes some of the best TosLink interconnects I've heard using gear that it made a difference with.

 

I read a couple of mentions of toslink optical connections on this thread in relationship to SACD players. Although you can hook up a fiber optic cable to an SACD player, no SACD information is going to be communicated through it. Also, Stereophile, as well as a couple of other audio magazines, have all ststed that their exhaustive tests have found coax to be better than optical. When dealing with cables, there are a lot of factors to consider, thus the best cable in one person's set-up may not be the best cable in another person's set-up. For example, the coax did not work for me, to much rf interference, I had to go back to toslink, (albeit reluctantly).

 

Doesn't the van den hul cost nearly as much as either the Sony transport or the MSB??

 

Gary, aren't there laws to protect the consumor in your neck of the woods, that is unless you've already owned them for over 30 days? I know there are here.