In Reply to: RE: Let the grenade throwing begin... posted by Romanesq on February 5, 2009 at 08:41:52:
Optical out (TosLink) provides great isolation from the RFI of the computer. (You will still want to put a power line filter on the computer to keep the RFI from its switching power supply out of the rest of your system.)
The problem with TosLink is that it is S/PDIF, which inherently adds jitter. The faster the rise time of the data link, the less jitter gets added. TosLink is pretty slow and the rise times are slow enough that it can barely handle the data rates for S/PDIF. So there is more jitter added than with a coaxial cable. Therefore TosLink is better than coax in one way and worse in another.
The end result will depend on how well your external DAC rejects jitter. Unfortunately there is no such thing as an S/PDIF DAC that completely rejects jitter, except for the Chord. It has a big buffer and it takes 4 seconds after you hit play before you hear music.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Let the grenade throwing begin... - Charles Hansen 10:26:20 02/05/09 (20)
- RE: Let the grenade throwing begin... - Jonathan Tinn 14:31:59 02/05/09 (18)
- RE: Let the grenade throwing begin... - Charles Hansen 14:51:07 02/05/09 (17)
- DAC sound regardless of transport used - Jonathan Tinn 16:24:55 02/05/09 (16)
- Please forgive the natural scepticism - but we've heard that before. - carcass93 11:44:27 02/06/09 (11)
- RE: Please forgive the natural scepticism - but we've heard that before. - Jonathan Tinn 11:52:29 02/06/09 (10)
- RE: Please forgive the natural scepticism - but we've heard that before. - ??? 12:13:43 02/06/09 (9)
- RE: Please forgive the natural scepticism - but we've heard that before. - Jonathan Tinn 12:34:11 02/06/09 (8)
- A piece of advice, Jonathan - Charles Hansen 20:43:26 02/06/09 (7)
- A bit of advice to you Charles... - Jonathan Tinn 23:32:56 02/06/09 (6)
- Ummm... Jonathan... - mls-stl 20:09:55 02/07/09 (2)
- RE: Ummm... Jonathan... - ??? 09:06:35 02/08/09 (1)
- OK - mls-stl 09:58:41 02/08/09 (0)
- RE: A bit of advice to you Charles... - davidspeed@shaw.ca 07:41:37 02/07/09 (2)
- RE: A bit of advice to you Charles... - Jonathan Tinn 11:36:33 02/07/09 (1)
- RE: A bit of advice to you Charles... - Tony Lauck 12:45:53 02/08/09 (0)
- Yea but zero is unobtainable! - Gordon Rankin 08:58:43 02/06/09 (2)
- RE: Yea but zero is unobtainable! - Jonathan Tinn 11:39:38 02/06/09 (1)
- ??????????? - Gordon Rankin 14:37:17 02/06/09 (0)
- RE: DAC sound regardless of transport used - Charles Hansen 18:58:34 02/05/09 (0)
- RE: Let the grenade throwing begin... - Romanesq 13:13:35 02/05/09 (0)