In spite of your suggestion of Stereophile dishonesty I would rather trust their opinion then yours. Monarchy (second link) that measured jitter does not have any interest one way or another.
There are valid technical reasons why Toslink is worse. In order to have low jitter good transport is needed. Good transport have most likely transitions (coax output) in order of 10ns (average transport about 25ns) and limited bandwidth of Toslink causes smearing edges and introducing jitter especially when system noise is present. Regular Toslink has bandwidth of 6MHz reaching 9MHz for very good one. It is too low to output fast transitions.
It is all system dependent especially when Toslink breaks ground loops and I don't question that Toslink might sound better to you - just speaking in general terms.
There are valid technical reasons why Toslink is worse. In order to have low jitter good transport is needed. Good transport have most likely transitions (coax output) in order of 10ns (average transport about 25ns) and limited bandwidth of Toslink causes smearing edges and introducing jitter especially when system noise is present. Regular Toslink has bandwidth of 6MHz reaching 9MHz for very good one. It is too low to output fast transitions.
It is all system dependent especially when Toslink breaks ground loops and I don't question that Toslink might sound better to you - just speaking in general terms.