Coax or optical?

[Ty07allstar]

I have the z-5500's and was wondering what is better. I have read some reviews and they say that they are both equal in quality but the optical is a little better for everyday use. Which should i get?

 

[MikeEnIke]

Tyler stop worrying about god damn cables and buy yourself a soundcard.

 

[Rastalovich]

Optical also = $$.

 

[Ty07allstar]

I don't need a sound card. The quality is fine for me. A good one is to much money.

 

[FarFarAway]

Optical is better generally

 

[Ty07allstar]

What are some of teh disadvantages of the optical? Besides the price.

 

[mVp24]

Optical is better, with my surround sound system we only used optical. The only disadvantes are price and the slots must be clear of dust or aprticles (which they should be anyways)

 

[Rastalovich]

There can also be the question of whether u`r optical input and output decoders work as true surround or stereo.

The stereo version sounds very good, but it`s easily testable with one of those simple desktop utils (if u optical from pc to pc).

 

[dave87]

Optical means better quality without spending fortunes on cables

 

[Toxteth O'Grady]

With analog signals the quality of cables is very important, much less so for a digital signal. In the benign home environment over a short run it will be impossble to tell the difference. With digital the difference between fiber and copper only matters for very high bandwidth/data-rate uses over long distances or in harsh environments. A good example is transatlantic phone cables.

For playing mp3s on a pc there is more quality lost through the lossy compression than you'll ever get from your cabling. Plus if you've downloaded an mp3 think how many (potentially) thousands of miles of copper and fiber the digital data will have travelled to get to your PC, so do you really think the last coupla feet in your house is gonna matter.



TOG

 

[PV5150]

Totally agreed TOG, you beat me to the punch

As an example Tyler, take the home theatre setup. A home theatre setup uses an optical cable for...well, for no terribly good reason at all. The highest bandwidth that S/PDIF cable is ever going to have to carry is that of cinematic DTS audio, which only needs the same 1,411,200 data bits per second as uncompressed CD audio.

 

[MikeEnIke]

Ah, didn't even think of the fact that it's a digital signal so it will either play at full quality or not at all (give or take). So, like I said. Worry about a sound card, you don't run z-5500's on onboard sound.

 

[Rastalovich]

Totally agreed TOG, you beat me to the punch

As an example Tyler, take the home theatre setup. A home theatre setup uses an optical cable for...well, for no terribly good reason at all. The highest bandwidth that S/PDIF cable is ever going to have to carry is that of cinematic DTS audio, which only needs the same 1,411,200 data bits per second as uncompressed CD audio.

Even then as I was badly implying, it`s very much down to the coder-decoders on either end of the cable. Spose the same is true for coax to an extent.

But come on guyz, think again about the files travelling miles and losing info.