Digital vs Interconnect Cables - Difference?

Relax I can't give myself the highest grade too!

05-22-13: Mtruong34
I thought for digital, XLR connectors are for AES/EBU standard and RCA/BNC are for SPDIF, not balanced vs unbalanced?

We are almost saying the same thing.

The electrical form of S/PDIF (as distinguished from its optical form, which of course is a different story altogether) is unbalanced, while AES/EBU is almost always balanced.

The reason I say "almost" in both of the preceding paragraphs is that an unbalanced form of AES/EBU exists. As indicated in this Wikipedia writeup, "the AES-3id standard defines a 75-ohm BNC electrical variant of AES3. This uses the same cabling, patching and infrastructure as analogue or digital video, and is thus common in the broadcast industry."

So it is a bit more precise to distinguish between XLR and RCA/BNC connection of digital audio signals on the basis of balanced vs. unbalanced, rather than AES/EBU vs. S/PDIF, if only one of the two sets of terms is being used, and if the context does not make clear what is being referred to.

The first table in this Wikipedia writeup is also informative.

Regards,
-- Al

All three AES/EBU, coax S/PDIF and optical S/PDIF in home systems are different forms of S/PDIF protocol. One of the main differences between protocols is that AES/EBU does not contain digital copy protection while S/PDIF does. What comes to balanced (XLR) input of my DAC is S/PDIF protocol that shouldn't be called AES/EBU. To avoid confusion I would also call them by type of connection/connector: unbalanced (or coax), balanced (or XLR) and optical (or Toslink).