optical vs coaxial?

[oqvist]

Is there any consensus what is better if we talk say 3 metre cable length? I want to know if it´s placebo that I find the audio in movies better on my PS 3 through optical over coaxial I use on my PC... digital out so I guess soundcard doesn´t matter but running Elite PRO.

 

[Blyss+]

I personally prefer Optical.

And Yes, as I found out, sound card does matter. Unless you're just using a passthrough like spdifer. Even then though, your receiver would have to be a solid piece of kit, to give you the sound you want.

 

[sdgserv]

I spent a lot of time with optical outs and then changed to coaxial and found I like the coaxial better. That being said, I could not give you one good technical reason why. I used some pretty decent optical cables and my $3 coaxial sounds better to my ears. Try different ones and see what you like.

 

[MrGuvernment]

I personally prefer Optical.

And Yes, as I found out, sound card does matter. Unless you're just using a passthrough like spdifer. Even then though, your receiver would have to be a solid piece of kit, to give you the sound you want.

sounds card matters little to non if your dumping out the raw signal which is exactly what coaxial / optical is used for S/PDIF out.

 

[Mr. Wolf]

Whichever you choose, don't waste $$ on expensive cables. My two 6 foot optical cables cost 96 cents each. I can't tell any difference between them and the $25 optical cables I returned to Best Buy. Even if there really IS an audio benefit with the expensive cables, the savings sounds sweeter to my ears. ;-)

 

[astrallite]

One that that does matter about SPDIF is the quality hardware/software sampler you use. Many SPDIF-capable soundcards will only output 48KHz, some only multiples of 48KHz. Some cards can natively sample at 44.1KHz, or multiples thereof, for music playback. (M-Audio Revolution is the only card I can think of off the top of my head that can do this). Some cards have only an auto mode in which resampling (may) be done without user input.

Otherwise you do have to deal with sound card resampling with non-supported sampling rates. Some people prefer to resample their output first via a media player (some of these are very CPU consuming) to a multiple of 48KHz for music to allow the audio to passthrough untouched by the sound card's software resampler.

Optical is light based and doesn't (or shouldn't) be affected by EMI fields. Coaxial does have that risk as does any electrical conductor. If you are running a ton of wires with some crazy media setup (I've got a PC, wii, ps3, 360, speakers, amps, receiver, sub, all in a small area) you may consider optical for this purpose.

A well shielded coaxial cable shouldn't be affected much, but depending on its proximity to a coaxial TV cable (or anything that stimulates ground loops) it might gain some unwanted noise.

As far as PS3, run hdmi if you can, it gives you access to Dolby TruHD, DTS-Master, and Multichannel PCM. PS3 has a native optical out...its probably a better idea to just use that.

 

[Nenu]

There is no (read zero) sound quality difference between shielded digital coax and optical other than the connector types, price, and you are less likely to break a coax cable.
Sound quality is identical because the job they do is identical.

 

[FLECOM]

There is no (read zero) sound quality difference between shielded digital coax and optical other than the connector types, price, and you are less likely to break a coax cable.
Sound quality is identical because the job they do is identical.

while i agree, a statement like this will cause you much grief over at headfi lol

 

[Nenu]

while i agree, a statement like this will cause you much grief over at headfi lol

I agree that errors can creep into a non completely isolated data link (ie coax with a bad gnd/earth).
This can result in drop outs and other anomolies but I have found it hard to even simulate these with any cable I own.
It may become apparent with longer lengths, bad connections or badly shielded coax.

Is there anything else worth mentioning?

 

[oqvist]

will I get the HD formats even if the receiver don´t support HD by itself? meaning the PS 3 encodes DTS HD for example itself?

I just got a LFE and can´t figure out how to get analogue audio out at the same time as running a digital signal so I can get it working. And on PS3 since it has no analogue audio you are totally busted if you don´t have a receiver it looks like ... I tried the AV cable but it seem to demand being hooked up on scart you just can´t use the red and white cable and take stereo audio out of it as I thought

Hope it doesn´t mean I must get a receiver with LFE output to get this.

The 360 was good that way since I want to remember it always outputted sound through it´s analogue at the same time as the digital signal when I had that and a buttkicker gamer.

otherwise there is no point not running with full dynamic range right? Wonder why normal is default? Using the nvidia codec I guess late night setting should give me most range?

I tried some other stuff like dscaler, spdifier (though that crashes zoomplayer more often then not lol)

 

[Nenu]

There are two (basic) ways to hook up a sub, either connected to the speaker out terminal of the front speakers or a dedicated LFE channel out from the amp.
If your sub doesnt support high level input, you will need to use the LFE channel.

To get the HD audio formats, your amp needs at a minimum to be able to process lossless PCM at the appropriate bitrate.
Your PC will need to be able to decode the HD formats but it has been demonstrated that the PC is not the best method of extracting HD audio as the current solutions also downsample so quality is lost.

For best quality HD audio, you need a decent amp that can decode streamed HD formats or a PS3 / Blu-ray player that can decode the formats and pass them to the amp as lossless PCM.

 

[astrallite]

There are first generation hdmi receivers that don't have active decoding abilities, but as long as you have a bluray player that can send linear pcm (i.e., ps3), there won't be a problem getting HD formats.

Of course "HD audio" is a bit of a misnomer at this point, since current bluray movies seem to be outputting no more than, or slightly higher than CD quality (705kbps/channel). Still, that's 10 times more than dolby digital.

 

[Klob]

Technically speaking, coaxial has less jitter and optical has no potential issues with electrical interference because it uses light to transfer the signal and not copper wire. Objectively speaking, I use both types connecting to my EMU 0404 and can't hear a difference between the two. I think jitter is an overrated spec to be concerned about.