Optical Vs CoAxial

[Pete Shields]

Why type of lead is considered best to link my Panasonic BD30 to Yamaha DSPAX759SE AMP.

Always used a 12 year old, half metre Audioquest cable in the past (no model ref, but cost £50 at the time), but heard that I should consider a newer coaxial cable, or even an optical. Experimented a few years ago with a QED midpriced optical, but it ended up on the xbox360, as I wasn't too impressed, so I went back to the audioquest.

 

[grdunn123]

Coaxial is considered to be better ( if you could detect a difference in a side by side direct comparison I'd be amazed!) as it's an electrical connection rather than fibre optic. Therefore cheap coaxials will probably sound worse than expensive ones.

As far as optical goes I guess it's rather like the HDMI cable arguments which rage on. Some say they can see a difference between cheap/expensive while some reckon (as long as it's a short run) a cheapo HDMI cable is just as good.

 

[Andrew Everard]

Coaxial should be better, as there are less conversions involved than with optical connections.

A properly made inexpensive optical interconnect should work as well as any - the main problem with such connections is light loss 'down the pipe', and reflections/scatter at the ends of the 'cable', where the end of the fibre meets the send/receive devices.

 

[Pete Shields]

My 12 year old Audioquest coaxial looks very similar in colour and connections to the set of audioquest quartz3 -Hyperlitz - triple balanced PPC copper interconnects that I bought at the same time (the writing on this leads has long worn out - it's a blue lead by the way). Is it any good as a lead?

Also, I previously used a pioneer 737DVD, which was replaced when it went faulty, by a cambridge audio DVD89. The 5.1 dvd audio through my amp (using the audioquest coaxial as well as an optical lead) with the Panasonic BD30 does not appear to be anywhere near as good as with these models. Is the new player not as good sonically?