Recommendation for Digital Coax

Optical is the most accurate, efficient way to transfer data from point a to point b, undisturbed.

If you are looking at optical to be used for data transfer, such as computer, then yes, optical is the cleanest way to get data from one point to another.  However, even optical has distance limits.

That being said, optical is not perfect.  The problem is that the LED emitters just cannot light up fast enough to create a perfect square wave pulse.  Lampizator did tests on this and compared it to several COAX transports.  The waveform from optical ended up being this very distorted curvy waveform (almost like a sine wave).  He was amazed that the receiver could translate this into pulses at all.

Under listening tests, optical can sound pretty okay with a good glass fiber cable.  However, even a cheap copper based coax like the Blue Jean Beldon will have more life and engagement in the music.  Everyone can have their own opinions and some may prefer optical in their own system.

Kimber Cable D60. You can search and find used. 

A big thanks to @ghdprentice  and  ​​​​@auxinput. Your explanations make sense. I did some reading last night but there is so much conflicting info on the net. One sight had me nearly convinced the opposite was true. Thank you as well @soix . I followed your recommendation and your link. They are on the way. I dislike having to get a six-foot length as Medusa behind the gear can get unruly. I know shorter is available but why take a chance with the concerns expressed by @auxinput.

Thanks all for the responses.

Optical cannot handle higher resolution audio files.  SPDIF can.  I switched from optical to SPDIF when I was playing around with a Schiit DAC that would handle high resolution files because optical resulted in no sound.

Optical cannot handle higher resolution audio files. SPDIF can.

’spdif’ (sony philips digital interface) is a digital music data transfer format that can be transmitted/received either optically (toslink) or electrically (rca/bnc)

https://www.lindy.co.uk/spdif-connections-explained-i70

optical spdif has some bitrate limitations, yes, relative to electrical spdif