Mac Mini to cyrus 6XPD- USB or Optical?

[admin_exported]

Having just picked up a lovely little mac mini and will be using it to feed me itunes lossless files to my cyrus 6xpd, was wondering what would be best sound quality to use- USB or Optical out? I have only previously used WIndows PCs and Digital Coax out as well so wondered if any kind and learned souls could give me their two penn'eth on what is best

Cheers big ears

 

[daveh75]

I would use optical, for no other reason than it offers galvanic (electrical) isolation..

 

[MajorFubar]

It's probably one of those can of worms questions again tbh. While it's true that optical connections cannot suffer from galvanic interference, the complication is that additonal components are required to convert electricity to and from light, seeing that the digital audio doesn't natively travel round your Mac's and amp's circuit-boards as light. So potentially what you gain in one hand you lose from the other. There's probably no better answer than try both. Maybe your dealer would lend you a suitable optical cable to try it out?

 

[AlmaataKZ]

The only difference I can think of would be if the inputs had different specs e.g. Usb up to lower sampling rates than optical. If both are equally specified there will be no audible difference between the inputs.