[kuma]

• last paragraph

 

[lan]

hmm interesting. is it possible to tell if ones equipment uses LEDs or laser diodes? how much more ARE laser diodes?

 

[Wodgy]

This is just dCS marketing material. The paragraph about asynchronous sample rate converters is dead wrong.

 

[kuma]

Quote:

Originally posted by Wodgy This is just dCS marketing material. The paragraph about asynchronous sample rate converters is dead wrong.

yeah. this isn't certainly a white paper, that's for sure.
nonetheless, I thought this is an interesting POV to share.

 

[princeclassic]

don't all toslink connectors use LEDs? isn't that why toslink can't pass a 192/24 signal well? (or so says Secrets)

 

[Sean H]

What was the meaning of this post, Kuma? Because you hate Optical or...? Just curious.

 

[kuma]

Quote:

Originally posted by Sean H What was the meaning of this post, Kuma? Because you hate Optical or...? Just curious.

information sharing. nothing less. nothing more.

would i hate optical? nah. like i said in the past, the glass toslink did not work in my systems or my taste, it is still a very viable options for some systems and they beat number of other coax i had on hand.

frankly, i dont' care what technology used in any piece of audiogear as long as they work to my advantage.

 

[Sean H]

Ah, I see. It is very interesting info. I'm actually using optical right now myself between a Sonica and Cal Sigma II tube DAC and just got that glass Toslink everyone is raving about. At first I wasn't sure I liked it anymore than this cheap $10 plastic AR Toslink I had been using but it's sounding pretty darn good now. I'd been through the whole A/B of coax and optical in the past and always preferred coax. I am using my computer as my transport right now and heard optical may have a slight benefit over coax because the coax would share it's ground connection with the computer's "dirty" ground and all. Anyhow, still trying to decide just what this glass Toslink is doing.

 

[kuma]

Quote:

Originally posted by Sean H At first I wasn't sure I liked it anymore than this cheap $10 plastic AR Toslink I had been using but it's sounding pretty darn good now.

a tonal balance of various toslinks should not change much. With glass optical, tho, the top end should sound more open than plastic ones.

With my own coax/toslink experiments, two of the Cardas was god awefull. Most of coax, the bass was definitely better defined than glass toslink, but it lost out on airy trebles.

 

[dd3mon]

Quote:

Originally posted by kuma a tonal balance of various toslinks should not change much. With glass optical, tho, the top end should sound more open than plastic ones. With my own coax/toslink experiments, two of the Cardas was god awefull. Most of coax, the bass was definitely better defined than glass toslink, but it lost out on airy trebles.

I guess I'm confused - how are bass zeros and ones not transmitted as well as high zeros and ones or vice-versa? I'm not saying there can be no difference between digital cables, but it really makes no sense at all that only one portion of the sound spectrum would be affected... Data loss/distortion/jitter would have no preference to any particular portion of the data being transmitted. If anyone has any insight into this (for example information that different sections of the audible spectrum are transmitted differently through the digital out, and thus could be treated differently by a cable) please let me know!

Glass presenting better highs than plastic, and copper coax better bass than either toslink - I'm not saying you're wrong in what you've heard by any means, but these are the results I would pick by the appearance and nature of these materials before ever hearing the signal passed through them.

-dd3mon

 

[kuma]

Quote:

Originally posted by dd3mon I'm not saying there can be no difference between digital cables, but it really makes no sense at all that only one portion of the sound spectrum would be affected... Data loss/distortion/jitter would have no preference to any particular portion of the data being transmitted. If anyone has any insight into this (for example information that different sections of the audible spectrum are transmitted differently through the digital out, and thus could be treated differently by a cable) please let me know!

I don't know. They just did. And between some coax and toslink, it wasn't subtle.

 

[dd3mon]

Quote:

Originally posted by kuma I don't know. They just did. And between some coax and toslink, it wasn't subtle.

I suppose it could be attributed to different output circuitry for the toslink/coax - this could favor one one end of the spectrum over the other.

 

[Sean H]

Like I said, I use an optical Toslink connection between my computer with a M-Audio Sonica and a Cal Sigma II DAC. I listen to a lot of internet radio and with CD's I copy them off to the computer and listen to them off my hard drive. Isn't jitter theoretically a non-issue in these two scenarios? There's no data coming off a spinning CD. Sure, the hard drive is a spinning device but it spins at a rate of about a thousand times fatser than a CD as many others have pointed out.

 

[kuma]

Quote:

Originally posted by Sean H I listen to a lot of internet radio and with CD's I copy them off to the computer and listen to them off my hard drive. Isn't jitter theoretically a non-issue in these two scenarios? There's no data coming off a spinning CD. Sure, the hard drive is a spinning device but it spins at a rate of about a thousand times fatser than a CD as many others have pointed out.

Hey Sean, which ripping software are you using when you copy CD onto the hard drive?
iTunes? (iTunes really blows, but can't find easy enough ripping software with EAC for Mac yet )

As for the jitter and reclocking device, one of the DAC I've tried with HD stored music was Chord DAC64 that supposedly reclocks all the signal ( thought this was a good thing ). Alas, I didn't like the sound of that particular DAC at all. whatever it did, it didn't work out too well. (both Toslink and coax connections )

 

[Sean H]

Hi Kuma- Actually I just open the CD and copy the aiff files onto the desktop. Is that not a good way to do it?