[DaddyWhale]

What do you prefer for connecting a digital source to a DAC, coax or toslink? If it matters, the DAC is a Chord Hugo 2 and the source is a high-end streamer (not the Chord 2go, though).

Thanks!

 

[stpope]

There are 2 opinions generally: TOSLINK has worse jitter because of the characteristics optical/electrical transducers, but S/P-DIF means there's an electrical connection between the devices (esp. bad if the source is a computer).

I tend to use optical TOSLINK with a DAC with a good clock recovery system.

stp

 

[PurpleAngel]

What do you prefer for connecting a digital source to a DAC, coax or toslink? If it matters, the DAC is a Chord Hugo 2 and the source is a high-end streamer (not the Chord 2go, though).Thanks!

I believe Coaxial is slightly better than optical, but optical seems like the more practical choice for the masses to use.
Me, I normally stick to USB.

 

[Redcarmoose]

In my uses it seems to be dependent on how the signal is used. Meaning that I listen and try to discern which way is better. Much of the time too, your not always going to have a choice. Meaning years ago my Rega Planet CD player only had SPDIF RCA coaxial out. So due to having a DAC with that input, that’s what I used. Now my Sony TA-ZH1ES amplifier sounds really bad with RCA SPDIF in from the same Rega, as a transport. It may not be that it’s that bad of a connection, but other choices sound better. I typically get USB from Walkman to sound best. But many will use optical in for the TA-ZH1ES. What many forget is there are plenty of MacBooks which offer Toslink SPDIF optical out. It’s inside the regular 3.5mm analogue headphone port. So you buy a special Apple plug and your set to go digital optical out of a MacBook bypassing and noise from USB.

The amazing thing is......I’m always reading about people learning to filter USB to gain farther audio improvements. Even my Walkman cradle has USB filtering attempting to reduce USB noise. I personally feel USB audio from a Walkman is typically better than USB audio from a computer.

 

[stpope]

Yes, the optical output cable is important for any Mac user; you really don't want your audio gear sharing a ground with the computer.