Amphenol glass toslinks - First impressions

If glass toslink sounds better than standard toslink, and they are both digital, could a better quality usb cable sound better than a standard usb cable?

I have been a digital guy most of my life, 1's and 0's, so I cannot figure out how the same 1's and 0's sound so different coming through different cables, but they do.

Mattzack2 - it sounds different because affect light transmission and therefore jitter. Jitter is a noise in time domain and affect clarity of the sound. Digital cables are in general better with jitter than toslinks but there are also jitter rejecting DACs (like Benchmark DAC1) where quality (or type) of cables or transport doesn't make any difference.

When you say ' digital cables are in general better with jitter than toslinks ', are you referring to 75 ohm coax cables and usb cables? I was thinking that toslinks were considered digital also.

I have a Valab DAC (2009) which is based on the old Philips tda1543 and dir9001 chips. I am just beginning to study it but I really like it so far.

Another thing you say is interesting. The right (jitter rejecting) dac will make the quality of its incoming cables or source a non issue. That seems to be a bold statement.

Thanks for the reply, but if you are correct, I have a few thousand dollars worth of equipment and cables I need to sell.

Mattzack2 - You're right. I was referring to coax (either 75 or 110 ohm). I don't consider fiber optics a cable (in electrical sense). I don't know much about USB. The reason for Toslink being inferior is slow voltage-light conversion and therefore longer edge that is more exposed to ambient noise on the receiver side.

Jitter rejecting DAC (like Benchmark) makes not only cables non-issue but also transport. I use the cheapest decent DVD player I could find ($60 Sony) with great results (and have DVD and MP3 playback + great tracking). Benchmark DAC1 has jitter bandwidth of just few Hz and at frequencies of interest (kHz) has way over 100dB rejection. Benchmark tested it with 1000' of cable - no audible difference.

Not every DAC labeled as "upsampling" is really that. Often companies use it instead of "oversampling". Bel Canto DAC3, if I remember correctly, have same jitter rejecting properties. As for the transport - as long as it is "bit-transparent" (no DSP processing or digital volume control) there will be no difference. It is big selling point of upsampling DACs but some people prefer to use NOS DACs - it's subjective. I found that stand alone, jitter rejecting DAC allows me to connect TV as well as computer (Benchmark has 3 digital inputs) and serves as preamp since it has volume control and input selector (I don't do analog).

Very interesting information!

I just replaced my best transport (Teac VRDS10) with my least expensive (Oppo 981). I also replaced my 75 ohm digital cable with the cheapest generic 110 ohm cable I could find in my house. I am going to listen to some of my favorite CDs and see if I can hear a difference.

I would think that it would be a difference of night and day. I also have some extremely good digital cables coming in the next few days and a high end USB cable also.

I just remembered that I have an old Sony Jukebox packed away that might have a digital output that I could test your claim with.

My Jadis is just warming up right now as I type, but the music coming through the dac is very clear using the less expensive cable and source. I am going to do my a/b comparisons using a Beth Orton that has proven to optimize the sound stage and clarity of my system.

My 'a' system will be my Teac VRDS10 transport output through a good digital cable into the Valab coax input.

My 'b' system will be a Oppo 981 DVD/CD player output through a CHEAP rca cable that is typical of any that come free with a low fi audio device. I know the Oppo is not low fi, but it is the only source that I have capable of outputting a CD through a coax. So, the very low fi cable should exhibit a poorer sound. Let's see.....

I have to agree with much of what Kijanki says. The 'b' system sounds excellent also. I am going to swap a few things around and see where this leads.