coax vs toslink

[saeyedoc]

Well I got my Touch yesterday. Had already setup LMS over the weekend and was able to get to it from the web browser, all indexing had been done.
Due to where I wanted to located the Touch, I ended up using coax since that's all I had around that was long enough. Because of the location of the router, I have the touch hooked up with ethernet and the server using wifi.
Piece of cake getting it to work. The longest thing was having to get the latest ios on the ipad we have so I could use ipeng.
ipeng is great, everything working well, sounds great.
I doubt I'd be able to hear the difference between 24/94 and 24/192 in a DBT, I have very little material in that format right now anyway. Can always stream with DLNA to my Oppo for those few tracks.
Doesn't seem worth it to use USB, would have to use a USB to s/pdif converter. No point in using an external DAC as my Anthem would just AD it anyway.
Love it so far!

[ralphpnj]

As I said at the bottom of my message, just posting my *EXPERIENCE* based upon many hours of listening and enjoying or not enjoying music. If you can't hear any difference then all the best to you, you've achieved the best sound for your system and I'm jealous and wish you all the best. But don't think that you know everything when you're just spouting all the stuff we've already read and either see the logic in (which I do) or disagree with and know that there must be something more to it (a something which as yet, has not been measured or documented, which I also do).

Humans are not measuring devices, so why should a piece of electrical measuring equipment or a law on sampling theory or transmission lines provide all of the answers on why digital music reproduction communicates with us emotionally or not? I suggest you think about that one!

Oh my what an awful burden it must be to be born with a pair of golden ears. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep.

Look I consider myself somewhat of an audiophile but that does not mean that I am willing to swallow each and every audiophile myth hook, line and sinker. What audiophiles seems to have forgotten is that the digital storage method, whether it is used for music, video, words or pictures, was developed as a means to overcome many of the limitations of the analog storage method. Sure digital introduces some limitations of its own but those limitations are not the same as the old analog limitations. And one of the old analog limitations that digital DOES NOT share is that digital is NOT dependent on the storage media and the method of data transmission. By this I mean that it makes no difference how the digital data is stored, be it on a hard drive, a tape, a flash drive or optical disc, nor does it make any difference how it is transmitted, be it via toslink, usb or coax. This feature was "built into" digital from the very beginning and is very well understood (outside of the audiophile world) and is the reason why a youtube video uploaded from China will play back perfectly on a computer located in Texas even though the digital data will passed through countless wires and relays along the way - because ones are ones and zeros are zeros.

Now don't get me completely wrong since I do believe in many of the basic ideas of high end audio, such as vibration control in loudspeakers, proper speaker placement, proper power amp and speaker matching, etc. But all of these ideas have one important thing in common: they are all based on good scientific reasoning and can easily be tested and measured. In addition, the previous paragraph does not mean that there is no room for improvement in digital audio, rather it means the areas for improvement lie somewhere other than the means and method of digital data storage and transmission.

[ralphpnj]

Due to where I wanted to located the Touch, I ended up using coax since that's all I had around that was long enough. Because of the location of the router, I have the touch hooked up with ethernet and the server using wifi.

I take by the above quote that your setup is something like this:

Server running LMS > wifi > router > ethernet (cat 5) > Touch > coax > Anthem MRX300

Yes?

Since everything is working fine and sounds great - congratulations! Should you start to experience any problems, especially when streaming 24bit/88.2 or 96kHZ material, then the first thing you should look at would be the server > wifi > router link since this the most important link and an changing to an ethernet link would most likely resolve any problems. Again, this is if and only if you start to experience trouble.

[saeyedoc]

I take by the above quote that your setup is something like this:

Server running LMS > wifi > router > ethernet (cat 5) > Touch > coax > Anthem MRX300

Yes?

Since everything is working fine and sounds great - congratulations! Should you start to experience any problems, especially when streaming 24bit/88.2 or 96kHZ material, then the first thing you should look at would be the server > wifi > router link since this the most important link and an changing to an ethernet link would most likely resolve any problems. Again, this is if and only if you start to experience trouble.

Exactly. Running ethernet from the server to the router would be a big job, it's in another room. Ran it for a few hours last night, no issues at all. I suppose it could be more of an issue if I run multiple zones off the server.

[lovejoy]

Oh my what an awful burden it must be to be born with a pair of golden ears. Just thinking about it makes me want to weep.

It's a curse. Oh to be able to enjoy music as much from a tinny micro system ;-).

Look I consider myself somewhat of an audiophile but that does not mean that I am willing to swallow each and every audiophile myth hook, line and sinker. What audiophiles seems to have forgotten is that the digital storage method, whether it is used for music, video, words or pictures, was developed as a means to overcome many of the limitations of the analog storage method. Sure digital introduces some limitations of its own but those limitations are not the same as the old analog limitations. And one of the old analog limitations that digital DOES NOT share is that digital is NOT dependent on the storage media and the method of data transmission. By this I mean that it makes no difference how the digital data is stored, be it on a hard drive, a tape, a flash drive or optical disc, nor does it make any difference how it is transmitted, be it via toslink, usb or coax. This feature was "built into" digital from the very beginning and is very well understood (outside of the audiophile world) and is the reason why a youtube video uploaded from China will play back perfectly on a computer located in Texas even though the digital data will passed through countless wires and relays along the way - because ones are ones and zeros are zeros.

Now don't get me completely wrong since I do believe in many of the basic ideas of high end audio, such as vibration control in loudspeakers, proper speaker placement, proper power amp and speaker matching, etc. But all of these ideas have one important thing in common: they are all based on good scientific reasoning and can easily be tested and measured. In addition, the previous paragraph does not mean that there is no room for improvement in digital audio, rather it means the areas for improvement lie somewhere other than the means and method of digital data storage and transmission.

I agree with the vast majority of what you say except for the transmission method. This is where the *BIG* differences happen. SPDIF/TOSLINK are both a massive fudge - always have been and all the manufacturers know this. The problem, before all of the transmission line reflections and impedance mismatches are that data and clock are interleaved down the same cable. Interleaving will always cause jitter issues, so this alone makes these formats less than desirable. No-one outside of a domestic environment uses TOSLINK/SPDIF, using balanced 110Ohm AES. I work every day with 110Ohm balanced and 75Ohm unbalanced digital audio connections and you can quite easily measure errors in going from one to the other without using balancing transformers. Shielded cables certainly make a difference if you're trying to get away with it, so it's not unreasonale to think that the same thing is happening with different grades of SPDIF/COAX cable - I'm not saying you have to spend silly money on esoteric cables. In fact, I'm positively against it, especially when you know that most of this stuff is just marketing and can be made up at home given some soldering skills and the knowledge of the right cables and plugs to use. USB of course avoids all of the transmission line problems and gives you separate clock lines, even better if you have an Asynchronous DAC connection

[saeyedoc]

It's a curse. Oh to be able to enjoy music as much from a tinny micro system ;-).



I agree with the vast majority of what you say except for the transmission method. This is where the *BIG* differences happen. SPDIF/TOSLINK are both a massive fudge - always have been and all the manufacturers know this. The problem, before all of the transmission line reflections and impedance mismatches are that data and clock are interleaved down the same cable. Interleaving will always cause jitter issues, so this alone makes these formats less than desirable. No-one outside of a domestic environment uses TOSLINK/SPDIF, using balanced 110Ohm AES. I work every day with 110Ohm balanced and 75Ohm unbalanced digital audio connections and you can quite easily measure errors in going from one to the other without using balancing transformers. Shielded cables certainly make a difference if you're trying to get away with it, so it's not unreasonale to think that the same thing is happening with different grades of SPDIF/COAX cable - I'm not saying you have to spend silly money on esoteric cables. In fact, I'm positively against it, especially when you know that most of this stuff is just marketing and can be made up at home given some soldering skills and the knowledge of the right cables and plugs to use.

It's reasonable to assume that there may be measurable differences, but are they audible? That's the real question. It's different in a pro setting where you don't want to propagate those small errors, they could add up to something audible eventually.

[ralphpnj]

It's a curse. Oh to be able to enjoy music as much from a tinny micro system ;-).

That's is the rub! Music can be enjoyed using an iPod boombox but if one wants to immerse oneself fully into the music then a somewhat nicer playback system is needed.

I agree with the vast majority of what you say except for the transmission method. This is where the *BIG* differences happen. SPDIF/TOSLINK are both a massive fudge - always have been and all the manufacturers know this. The problem, before all of the transmission line reflections and impedance mismatches are that data and clock are interleaved down the same cable. Interleaving will always cause jitter issues, so this alone makes these formats less than desirable. No-one outside of a domestic environment uses TOSLINK/SPDIF, using balanced 110Ohm AES. I work every day with 110Ohm balanced and 75Ohm unbalanced digital audio connections and you can quite easily measure errors in going from one to the other without using balancing transformers. Shielded cables certainly make a difference if you're trying to get away with it, so it's not unreasonale to think that the same thing is happening with different grades of SPDIF/COAX cable - I'm not saying you have to spend silly money on esoteric cables. In fact, I'm positively against it, especially when you know that most of this stuff is just marketing and can be made up at home given some soldering skills and the knowledge of the right cables and plugs to use. USB of course avoids all of the transmission line problems and gives you separate clock lines, even better if you have an Asynchronous DAC connection

It's a good thing that I have a Transporter connected to my preamp via the balanced analog outputs in my main stereo since this completely avoids having to use any nasty coax or toslink connections .

On my other Squeezebox to external DAC setups I've simply learned to live with these less than perfect means of digital data transmission.

[lovejoy]

It's reasonable to assume that there may be measurable differences, but are they audible? That's the real question. It's different in a pro setting where you don't want to propagate those small errors, they could add up to something audible eventually.

Is it audible in the pro environment, that's the $64,000,000 question. Difficult to hear in the environment that I work in, but when the opportunity arises, I'll do my best to get a good listening session done.

[lovejoy]

On my other Squeezebox to external DAC setups I've simply learned to live with these less than perfect means of digital data transmission.

Same here, I love my Squeezebox and for a good session discovering new music via Spotify or some internet radio, nothing comes close. I keep all of my music ripped losslessly on a NAS drive connected via Cat6 to the SBT, but if I'm in the mood to listen to my CD collection with the best possible audio quality, then the CD goes in the Audiolab's draw every time and the SBT gets switched off.

[Viventis]

I asked a question in the Triode, Digital Enhancement App thread as to whether the app would allow the transmission of 24bit/192kHz through toslink or spdif cables. The response I received is that it would, so long as my receiver's DAC could handle it. Fortunately, my Onkyo 809 has a DAC that does handle 24bit/192kHz.