AES/EBU vs RCA s/pdif into dac, RCA analog out

Thanks Danager. Yes, I also want to think that AES/EBU digital input must be better, but that may just be prejudicial thinking. I will have to try an AES/EBU cable to see. To make a fair comparison tho, the AES/EBU cable should be the same manufacturer/model as the RCA s/pdif digital cable. Of course this means that if you have an expensive RCA coax s/pdif digital cable, you'd have to buy it's even more expensive AES/EBU stablemate from the same manufacturer. As an audiofool, I'm up for that. Just don't tell my wife!

There is no general answer, as in theory, the two inputs (coax SPDIF and AES3) should sound the same. In older or less well engineered DACs, one could sometimes hear a small difference between the inputs, but I have not noticed differences with recent DACs I've tried.

Try to get the cable on a money-back basis, is my advice.

(P.S. AES3 is the current designation for what is sometimes called AES-EBU.)

Typically AES will be better as an input than coax. But it depends (like virtually everything in high end audio). What is your source? This makes a big difference. For that matter, what DAC? If you have a $10K or $20K DAC AES is likely to sound better. If you have a $600 DAC it is unlikely to make a difference. The “ifs” go on.

There is a place under your UserID to place some photos of your system and components. This would give use a big help in answering your question. And you would not have to keep repeating the components in every question.

I'm running AES/EBU from my DDC to my Dac.

I like it better than the I2S. More depth.

My source is an Aurender A20 music server feeding it's usb only output to a  Berkeley Alpha USB DDC. From there, I can output AES/EBU or RCA S/PDIF coax into my Weiss DAC202 (no usb input on the Weiss DAC202). The Aurender A20 has it's own internal dac, but I find that to be bettered by the external Weiss dac.