The Official (and only) Optical vs. Coaxial Thread

[sub780lime]

did this thread ever have a poll, i didnt check the first page, sorry, lazy-if it hasnt had one i think added one would serve well

[sub780lime]

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look i killed a thread, how disappointing

[aintnosin]

Question: Has anyone worked with one of those gizmo boxes that convert coax to optical or vice versa? How well do they work?

[brian]

Originally posted by aintnosin
Question: Has anyone worked with one of those gizmo boxes that convert coax to optical or vice versa? How well do they work?

I bought a $20 one -- and works fine. No digital drop outs, and i couldn't hear the difference. My set-up isn't exactly high-end, but it gets the job done.

[lord_loafer]

My simple way of seeing this arguement is that optical has to be converted from electric/light/electric - so loses on the conversion, but because it's light, is not as affected by electrical interference.

Coaxial on the other hand is electric/electric, so has no conversion involved, but is more succeptable to noise from other equipment.

Just my little contribution.

Thanks,
Mark.

[Iguana Man]

Originally posted by aintnosin
Question: Has anyone worked with one of those gizmo boxes that convert coax to optical or vice versa? How well do they work?

I've got one for my game consoles. My XBox and PS2 each have an optical going into the box, and then a coaxial out to my A/V receiver. I'd have the 'Cube and my Dreamcast connected too, but they don't support 5.1. Anyway, it auto senses the console that's powered up and it works just fine for me. Sound quality isn't degraded from what I can tell. Then again, I'm using it for video games and not "critical listening". Here's a link to the one I'm using;

http://209.248.228.2/aacconsumers/1155detc.html

[I 8 Piglet]

while I am still in the camp of coax and optical produce the same quality sound, I just learned somthing new. I recall that someone here made a digital coax cable out of some things like a rusty nail and an old coat hanger, (I think it was Chromy but I dont remember) and it worked just fine. So I have always just used any old rca cable for my digital coax needs. Well with all the problems I had getting my new setup squared away I ended up needing a long audio cable. So again I just used a cheap av cable that the cable left me (to use as component video no less). I should have noticed something was not kosher when the first tip I plugged in snapped right off (it was Yellow), but I just went ahead and switched to the white and left it at that. This thing was terrible the audio would drop out all the time. And its quite anoying with a Sony reciever, because it takes so long to regognize digital signals, and it clicks when it does so, so we were constantly losing a half second or so of sound and then getting that anoying click. It was absolutly the worst when I watched the parachute scene from the second BoB episode, just about every 30 seconds or so it would drop out.

In the end, I replaced the cheap cable with one of my radio shack cables, and it works just fine.

[Ruined]

edit: nevermind I replied to this 2yrs ago :p

[Shadowman82]

I have so far been using Optical but I am planning to upgrade my home theatre system soon so I too wondered if one was bettter than the other .

I asked Panasonic who told me that there is no technologically proven answer to say one is better .