[infinitesymphony]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nugget BJC already offers mini-to-RCA 1505F on its digital audio page.

Ah, well-spotted! Hmm... Now I'm very tempted to pull the trigger on a new mini-mini for my computer speakers.

 

[Nugget]

Quote:

Originally Posted by infinitesymphony Please give us your impressions when/if you order the cable. Hearing about BJC custom orders is always fun.

Nice turnaround. Ordered a 20' mini-to-RCA 1505F on Friday afternoon, box arrived Monday, everything fully functional. $27.75 for the cable, $5.75 for shipping.

 

[Redo]

I say go with optical over the longer runs and don't worry about it

. It's not like you're hooking up uber high end equipment here. Go for the monoprice optical cables, great price and it does the job for digital!

 

[Sycraft]

Well it'd have to be a pretty long run and good cable before I'd use optical. The thing is normal optical cable is plastic which is fine but rather lossy. Real quality fibre cable is expensive. I don't know what audio stuff costs but the Siecor cable we use for high speed long range (where long range is defined as less than 10km but more than 1) is over $10/metre and that's purchased in rather large quantities.

Coax is pretty amazing in it's bandwidth abilities and loss specs if it's thick. S/PDIF needs a maximum of 25MHz and you can easily get coax that'll do 3GHz (good SDI/HD-SDI cable for example). I've seen SDI runs that are 1km long. Now of course that's some damn thick cable, but still.

For anything short (like under 5 metres) I'd use whatever is convenient. I have yet to be convinced there's a sonic difference, unless it's an extremely high interference area and optical is better. For example I use optical from my SD-20 to my computer since that's all it has, but coax from my DVD-player to receiver since I didn't have any optical cable handy (both support both).

For mid range distances I'd look at either coax or more likely cat-6 since it's cheap and flexible. It's not hard to get over 100 metres with cat-6 and some cheap baluns and the price is right. For that matter you can usually do multiple signals (up to 4) down 1 cable bundle.

For long haul, it'd really depend. Probably I'd look at not doing S/PDIF.

However in a normal home setup, you are usually talking distances of 2-3 metres at most. For that I doubt it matters. You don't likely have enough interference to cause problems in coax, and I don't think that the optical transformation degrades the signal a noticeable amount (again something someone would have to prove to me with a blind test). Just use what's easy.

 

[5ergo]

coax vs optical

it really doesn't matter imo