Gerrardasnails:Thaiman:Optical
I would disagree and offer no science, just common sense. How many different price levels of coaxial cables are there compared to opticals. How expensive is the best optical compared to the best coaxial?
Ah yes, a pair of scissors must be better suited to open a letter since it's more expensive than a cutter
Optical cables are cheap, not because the technology is inferior, but because they're very simple products and cheap to produce. Most of them aren't glass fibre mind you, just plastic. It's said it's important to keep the connections clean though, dust, grease etc.
As stated in this thread, coaxial cables are susceptible to EMI, optical is not. This is why you'll be able to find more expensive coaxial cables with added EMI shielding.
As far as choosing between optical or coaxial for SQ, it shouldn't matter unless there's lots of EMI (close proximity of mains cables and such). In that case you could go for optical.
I prefer optical for a different reason though, since they don't carry any electrical current, you avoid issues like grounding.
Fahnsen:
Gentlemen, this is digital signals, consisting
of ones and zeros, that is ons and offs. There is no way known to
science why the sound should alter with different cables, or with
electrical versus optical signals.
Can this finally be put to bed please? I prefer logic over cable myths myself, but this is incorrect science. A "digital" signal over coax or any other electrical cable is not that different from analogue signals. It's just a different waveform (a square wave). Nothing to do with ones and zeros. As with all electrical signals, information *can* get lost or altered in transmission. I think this myth comes from the fact that in computer applications a difference between the sent and received data is disastrous. In computer applications, the integrity of the data is guaranteed by employing error correction protocols. But it's not correct that a "digital" signal can't be affected.