Imac - dac - nad320

[Rallye666]

Hi all, looking to add a dac to my imac to take advantage of my new tidal subscription.

the only problem is my iMac is 10m away from my amplifier.

I could airplay to my apple tv and output from there, but I understand the sound quality wouldn't be as good as wired directly

How would a 48khz AirPlay stream compare to 44.1khz (or higher) sent down a 10m toslink cable?

Is 10m to long for toslink?

Thanks for any help, James

 

[ID.]

"TOSLINK cables are usually limited to 5 meters in length, with a technical maximum[1] of 10 meters, for reliable transmission without the use of a signal booster or a repeater. However, it is very common for interfaces on newer consumer electronics (satellite receivers and PCs with optical outputs) to easily run over 30 meters on even low-cost (0.82 USD/m 2009) TOSLINK cables."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOSLINK

Arguably you won't hear much of a difference, but why not pick up some cheap optical cable and give it a go yourself and compare the two?

The longest I've tried is 5 meters with pretty much the cheapest cable I could find. No problems with it so far.