Can you hear the differences? TOSLINK / COAXIAL in your system

[bbp]

It seems that RMAA test is not senstive enough for such a low noise/distortion testing >_<

[Iain McNeill]

Jitter in TOSLINK is degraded by poor transmission due to non-flat terminations of the fiber. Any scratch or off angle cut will scatter light rather than couple it.

Jitter in coax is degraded by imperfect 75ohm matching in the driver, cable and receiver. I've never measured RCA connectors for 75ohm impedance but they sell RCA jack claiming to be "75 ohm" connectors.

Only way to tell is to look at the eye pattern on the receiver.

[SoNic_real_one]

Originally Posted by Iain McNeill

Jitter in TOSLINK is degraded by poor transmission due to non-flat terminations of the fiber. Any scratch or off angle cut will scatter light rather than couple it.

What has that to do with jitter? It will attenuate slightly the signal, yes. But how will "jitter" the phase of the signal?

Originally Posted by Iain McNeill

Jitter in coax is degraded by imperfect 75ohm matching in the driver, cable and receiver.

Again... miss-matching will reduce the signal. But how is that affecting the phase in a varriable way to induce jitter?

[Pano]

Echos, reflections. Easy to see on a video or VGA signal.

[Iain McNeill]

Also, as the signal to noise ratio reduces, the uncertainty in the 1-0 transition point becomes greater. Even attenuation manifests itself as jitter. You have to think like a comparator