Daniel,
I thought I answered your question about the Pronto able to learn IR keyboard codes..The answer is yes. Search on the Pronto forum it...I'm sure somebody's already got it.
:-)

Techheads:

Isn't this fun? Why you guy's were debating, I have watched several DVD movies. Hahahahh. Some of you are very educated in the subject. I've even learned a few new things as well. Well here I go with my two cents. I chose coax. Why? Simple. Go plug in a toslink and then the coax and feel how positive the coax connection is. To me, when all else is pretty equal I chose the one that had the more positive connection. I have had the toslinks come out on me before. Unless you have the AT&T toslink with the correct unit that will except it, I say coax.

I was looking at a menu one day at a resturant and my freind asked what was taking so long for me to order. I told him that I couldn't make up my mind between the two meals. I told him they were both my favorite. He took the menu from me and asked, both equal? I replyed yes. He said, simple choose the cheaper. Just food for thought.

Thanks
Greg Brown
Entertainment Technologies
Dallas Tx.

When it comes to choosing my favourite food, I won't choose the cheaper one because it may not be what I felt like at the time. I sometimes order one and con someone to order the other, then we can share and so I get to eat both at the same meal session.

But I agree that when it comes to connection, you probably don't want to go for the one that is not as secure.

Digital coax cables don't carry an electrical signal!!! Optical cables don't go through an electrical to light to electrical conversion! I can't believe anyone thinks that.

Plus if it is generally believed that coax is better than optical, as was stated at the beginning of this thread, then why is this thread so goddamn long?

BTW, I've never seen so much text with so little actually being said.

Dave,

The purpose of a forum is to discuss and exchange ideas, to share problems and solutions. A question was stated and we went after it to discover the facts, not "generally believed...".

You never participated, yet you tried to belittle the efforts of those in this thread. Do you think your post carry much more content?. Please, next time, be considerate, say what you want, but do it in a polite and responsible manner.

Dave,

"Optical cables don't go through an electrical to light to electrical conversion!" That is true. I don't think anyone participated in this thought that for one second. The player converts electrical signals to light, then sends it down the optical cable to the amp and the amp converts light back to electrical signals....I thought that was pretty easy and obvious to understand.

The August 99 issue of Home Theater features an article that compares digital cables, both coax and optical. It includes some discussion about jitter(reflections and their effect on the PLLs). They differentiate use of certain digital cables for CD PCM audio and others for Dolby Digital bitstreams(I hadn't considered this before). They claim a non-audiophile noticed differences between the cables. I'm not running out for new new cables yet though ;^) Enjoy !

Doug

So, should I bother to get a digital optical cable to go from my CD player to an optical connection on my decoder, replacing a standard RCA type stereo wire?

I have a Sony 5 CD unit that has both RCA and optical.

jb, it depends on what receiver you have. If you believe the receiver has better DAC than the CD player, then you should use digital connection.

Ahh, let me elaborate.

Cheap Sony 5 CD unit ($75 @ Sony outlet - New Unit)
Technics SH-AC500D DD/DTS decoder
Sony STR-GA7ES 5.1 Ready Receiver

currently using RCA stereo wire to do CD-->REC.

Just wondering if I should bother to use the digital out on the CD unit to the Technics SH-AC500D.


Any thoughts ?

Your Technics' DAC should be better than your Sony's... Mind you, I've found that my Receiver, while good at DD, isn't equally good at music CD. My CD player's DAC turned out to be better. But then, my CD player isn't exactly the $75 model....

This is the first thread I have visited on this site and I was surprised by the amount of disinformation. Daniel, you sound convincing, you must be a good salesman. However, salesmen are some of the most accomplished liars I have ever met. That is not to say they are malicious, they just don't know any better. They gain all their "knowledge" by product descriptions written by marketing people, not engineers. Just a few points, neither coaxial or optical is perfect. Just because you start with 10110010 and end with 10110010 does not mean they will sound the same(although 98% of people will not be able to discern a difference). People who quote percentages are 78.2% full of hot air. Gold is NOT the best conductor. Gold does not oxidize, it is inert which makes it a good connection material. Certain dissimilar metals react with each other which is why gold is plated to connectors, it is a tradeoff, reduced initial absolute conductivity vs the possibility of a deteriorating connection over time. The sheild in a coax digital cable does not serve to unite the ground planes between equipment, it does not need to. This is only significant if using analog connections. Digital audio is transmitted in the PCM (Pulse Code Modulated) format. The sample rate and bit depth is of little consequence to the connection medium (optical or coax). The quality of either type is determined by the design and implementation of the conversion and transmission parts in the equipment much more than any effect realized by the cables themselves. The main reason for using optical is to avoid the induced 'noise' into the signal from sources such as AC power cables. This effect is largely irrelavent but present. Coax allows the use of cables you already own and is more durable. Splitting the signal is problematic with both types but solutions are available for each. I have experienced a few problems using optical, my sony receiver developed a random clicking when using the optical inputs, I have heard of others having the same problem using coax inputs. Jitter is a very real phenomenon even though it took some time to quantitively identify its effects. It does not produce bit errors but instead time domain errors. It is present in both formats. The quality of cable does have some bearing on jitter in both cases. CD audio is always theoretically 16bit 44.1k samples per second. It always averages out to this over time but each clock tic is not always at the same interval. The effects of this are dependant on how the signal is sent and received more than the medium it is sent through. A receiving decoder with its own reference clock minimizes time domain errors at the cost of a possible occasional bit eror. A receiving decoder that is referenced to the incoming signal typically has very low if any bit errors but may have significant time domain errors depending on the cable and upstream equipment. The type of DAC can amplify or reduce this effect as well, a single bit DAC (sigma delta) typically has fewer time domain errors but a less acurate total waveform, a multibit (parallel) DAC is capable of a more perfect waveform but can generate its own time domain errors when there are changes in the MSB (most significant bit). What is the significance of this? That you almost never know what type your equipment uses so don't sweat it. Use whatever connections your equipment has and try not to think about it. After all, there isn't much you can do about it. Use a format converter if necessary but use as few as possible. JB, yes, use the digital connection from your CD player. Otherwise whats the point of owning that fancy stand alone decoder?
slo ride

Bevan,

Well after reading several reviews of the Technics SH-AC500D DD/DTS decoder, It's reported by many that while doing DAC for CDs it cuts off the first second or two of audio...... arrrggg !!*&^%%$$# ...... so, this sounds really annoying and I'm just gonna stick with my current RCA stereo-->REC setup. Plus I want it about 12 ft from my receiver and a digital optical cable that lenth would cost almost as much as the Cd Player, so RCA it stays, just picked up a 12 ft RC cable for $10.

BTW, I used (still do) have a spendy Sony ES standalone CD player from 84 or 86, well it finally died (skips all the time) so, In a frustrated moment I went and picked up the cheap $75 unit. I can also playback CDs on my Sony DVD 530, but alas not CDRs, which I have many, so I needed something quick to playback CDRs.

Think I'll use the Technics SH-AC500D DD/DTS decoder strickly for DVD and adding DTS to my setup.

thanks for your thoughts,
jb

My 2 cents. Silver is the best metal conductor. Some relays and large contactors use silver cadmium alloy. Solder is an alloy. Soldering causes a bond with the different metals. Just having different metals touch each other is not a chemical bond. Gold is actually quite poor. In ANY case you should never mix metals. Whatever you have SHOULD all be the same. Different metals can attack each other. It is not the oxidation but the reaction that degrades the signal. Many computers fail within a year because they mixed tin and gold connections on the memory modules! A diamond shining in pitch (complete) dark? What are you smoking?! There had to be some tiny amount of light from somewhere you could not see directly. As far as computers using coax, the digital signal also has parity and error correcting which is not in audio that I am aware of. Coax can possibly have interference but optical? Cosmic rays maybe? Coax not carrying an electrical signal?? Hang an O-Scope on it and take a look! That's not grape jelly in there! In any case, if there is enough interference/signal loss (from any cause) to cause the digital 1's to be too low or the 0's to be too high then you have a serious problem!