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Thread: Toslink (optical) or Coaxial? Which is better? |
    
New member Username: Kingdufus
Beantown
Post Number: 9
Registered: Apr-04
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| Posted on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 12:53 pm: |
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Which produces better Digital sound, a Toslink or Coaxial connection (when connecting a DVD player to a 5.1 receiver)? I also heard that if you use an Optical connection, the digital signal is processed by the receiver, and if you connect via coaxial, the digital signal is processed by the DVD player. Is this true? |
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New member Username: Persvako
North Europe
Post Number: 6
Registered: Jun-04
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| Posted on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 - 06:26 am: |
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No, via RCA-cables the signal is processed by the player. With digital cables the receiver processes the sound. Only with "better" players it makes sense to use RCA-cables. It should be the same in the digital cables, which to use. They only transfer 0's and 1's. If the length is no more than ~2 meters, or 7 feet it's the same I think. Only advantage using optical cable is that it doesn't transfer electric. So it's more safe because there can be no harm to the receiver, in case of connecting a computer to the receiver. |
Silver Member Username: Project6
Post Number: 659
Registered: Dec-03
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| Posted on Wednesday, June 09, 2004 - 06:51 pm: |
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different schools of thought and perception on this one. Toslink or Optical, some claim that they sound harsh, thin, bright. Digital Coaxials are some hear it to be warmer and fuller. Some claim to hear no difference, so it is all in your ears and how you perceive the sound, and on that note, all that matters is how you hear it and how you like it.
Toslink however, being optical pulses are less prone to interference over long cable runs as opposed to a poorly shielded coaxial cable. Safety is not an issue to the receiver.
Dolby Digital and DTS signals are flagged by the DVD player and is encoded in the DVD itself and these signals are sent to the receiver to be decoded and processed (via toslink or coaxial). The DVD player's job is to make sure these signals are sent properly to the receiver, some do it better than others, hence the big price differences on some players. |
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| Posted on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 08:21 pm: |
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Toslink is infinitely better than analogue coaxial, but then any form of digital is infinitely better than any form of analogue. Providing the cable is of sufficient quality to provide the bandwidth required by the protocol used across it.
Also a cable when being used to transfer data digitally will have NO impact on the sound of music once decoded, as there will be some form of error correction used to ensure that the result is not audably different once decoded.
The only advantage of using optical cable instead of a digital coaxial is that the optical cable is unaffected by electromagnetic interference given off by electrical therefore giving the decoder less work to do. You have to remember that you can currently get 1000Mb\s ethernet running down copper (with no problems caused by signal loss), which is the same stuff as the coaxial cable, and that uses a clock speed of 1000Mhz (1Ghz) which is a lot faster than 3Mhz which is the fastest spdif or any other digital audio interconnect runs,
So it's just a matter of which you prefer for your installation practicality wise. |
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| Posted on Wednesday, August 25, 2004 - 07:47 am: |
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personally i feel like my sound goes further (i mean volume up) and becomes smoother and nicer when i use a toslink in contrast when i use a dig coaxial. They both good though.. I dont know if i feel the differcence cause i use it on a 5.1 speakers for pc creeative. |
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