ST Glass Fiber Optical Output?

[georgehifi]

I have a transport to play around with (Enlightened Audio Designs) EAD T-1000 that has a ST glass optical output.

What do I need to do to the D/A converter to give it a input to accept this output from the transport, I've heard that this can be very good, is it worth the trouble?

Or just stick to the coax cable conection?

Cheers George

[Jocko Homo]

If you ask the guys who designed the fiber/laser interface components..........they used to be called AT&T..........they will tell you that fiber is designed to work on links ("spans") where copper gives out as a medium for high-speed data transmission. Which is around 1 km. At spans less than that, too much light is reflected back into the TX laser, and you get a nasty thing called mode hopping. Does horrible things to a digital waveform. Especially if you pick up the fiber cable and move it around!

Yes, it will pass data. No, it won't sound good. Took the clowns at Stereophile a few years to figure that out. Not that we didn't try to tell them......

I think it would be easier to make a coax TX/RX pair than to get your hands on a km or so of fiber, and make a patch cord with it.

Jocko

[Elso Kwak]

There!

[georgehifi]

Right!!





Stick with the coax


Cheers George

[KeithC]

I've been using optical coupling for around 5 years - initially to avoid noise from my PC front-end. Every so often I do a coax comparison, but can't hear any difference.

Current system: Terratec soundcard->DAC1-> Lowther EX3's. 10 metres of glass between the soundcard and the DAC1, the Lowthers fed directly from the DAC1 headphone sockets.