A friend of mine just told me that the sound quality is pretty much identical except on cables over 15 foot length. I gotta hook up my setup with something of 25 feet and he said that if I use coax digital cable, over that kind of length I am gonna get a quality loss, while optical should still be 1:1. Is that true? Because I can't even find optical cable of that length anywhere, even coax ones cost like 30-40 bucks.
Technically yes it is true, though I really highly doubt unless you are a supreme audiophile that you will notice too much noise within the signal if you use coax. I mean, it will incur noise no doubt. Depending on your setup though and the kinda coax cable you use I don't think it will be a problem for you. Just make sure you don't run it along with any other cables for a fear of crosstalk. If you could find a longer optical cable then naturally that should be your first choice and you are right, what you put on one end of an optical cable, you get on the other end. No signal degradation whatsoever.
i used both methods , using 1,5 meter coax and optical. the ONLY difference i noticed, is that the optical is annoyngly lower volume, compared to the other sources of my amplifier. its like half the volume, and every time i switched the source to the HTPC i had to double the volume to make it audible. i think that optical is generally overrated. never used it for more than 3m anyway. maybe on 25m meters it makes some difference.
Digital sound no matter how it is tranferred does not lose sound quality. Like all digital signals it will either be perfect or it won't, it will not gradually degrade over distance.
Optical is inferior over long distance because the signal fades faster than coaxial. Also I think it optical only supports 24 bit.
He's not going to have any trouble, I have fiber optic lines that are over a mile and a half long with no boosters. Here you will find all the optical line you need Monoprice cheap.
hi mate i have a high end setup which over all cost me around the £3.500 and i can confirm that their is a difference in sound quality, a few tip i will note below tip1- while going over longer distance optical will give better quality and less interference. tip2- coax has a rounder/deep sound while optical is a more precise/detailed sound. tip3- try to use the shortest lengh interconnects as possible and keep away from electic cables like extensions ect... i have tryed about 4brands of coax/optical cables from cheep £15 0.75m to 4m and also £30-99 cables at 0.75m length, and i prefer coax just because my speakers are treble happy and and i biwire them so i really dont need the extra detail that comes with optical i would advice unsing optical but get a good lead, but if u have just got a pc speaker setup or a slandered sound setup like sony..... then it wont matter as the sound isnt that great anyway, this help is only advice if u have separates with biwire speakers and good speaker cable at around £2-£9per meter p.s. before i get any **** for my post as theirs always one noob out their, i have dont extensive testing on a wide range of setups and i can tell which cable is plugged in with out looking as i did a demonstration with a few mates which included 8cables and i named everyone blindfolded, so my ears are trained enough to post what i have
Fibre Optic cable used in WAN is not the same as TOSLINK, which transports digital audio between components. Another thing too, is that Coax is susceptible to RF interference while Optical is not... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK
