Connecting PC to hifi

unclebob123 · 6 Dec 2018 at 23:37

I'm about to buy a new PC and I am wondering what will be the best way to connect to my stereo. I have a Cambridge audio cxa60 which has toslink and digital coaxial. It's my understanding that digital coaxial is probably the best option?

My question is would I benefit from including a sound card in my build or would that offer no benefit over on board sound so the DAC in my amp will be doing the decoding?

Thanks

Marsman · 7 Dec 2018 at 00:03

Toslink is better because it can avoid any unwanted noise due to having no electrical wiring, unlike coaxial, which does.

If your motherboard has toslink, then no point in getting a sound card, unless you plan to play games using headphones; in which case a sound card will be of benefit.

unclebob123 · 7 Dec 2018 at 00:14

But isn't toslink more suseptable to jitter than digital coaxial? It was also my understanding that digital coaxial has greater bandwidth.

Doug2507 · 7 Dec 2018 at 01:24

All depends on the source and dac. Cheap enough to get toslink and coax to compare in your setup.

The only benefit a soundcard would give is giving you the coax output to test along side the mobo toslink. (Assuming the mobo doesn't have coax)

EsaT · 7 Dec 2018 at 11:01

unclebob123 said:
But isn't toslink more suseptable to jitter than digital coaxial? It was also my understanding that digital coaxial has greater bandwidth.

Both use exactly same S/PDIF interconnect standard.
One just sends those bits through electrical connection (with its vulnerability to ground loops and EMI) and other optically.

And it's optical fibre which has vastly lot more bandwidth capability.
How do you think optical fibres would have otherwise completely replaced copper in backbone networks of telecom operators?

JasonM · 8 Dec 2018 at 00:11

unclebob123 said:
But isn't toslink more suseptable to jitter than digital coaxial? It was also my understanding that digital coaxial has greater bandwidth.

I notice no jitter from my realtek spdif out, and this is compared to my Asus St that has an precision clock to reduce jitter. So connect to your motherboard TOS link and you will be fine.