Well I’ll be damned. Optical cable came in and I come back to read your reply, total fail. Audio drops every 2 seconds or so. Went back and made sure it clicked on both ends, no cigar. To the trash $5 bill. Unless I buy a more expensive cable, then how to know if the AE is at fault or the SGCD doesn’t like the AE optical signal. It read it at 44.1k, but keeps dropping. I’ll stay with the 3.5mm to XLR cable which is flawless. I have little patience for the little bits. At least I knock on wood, because it could be worse with ground loops.
Latest: it’s the AE. I ran optical from DVD player and no issues.
My Directv box kept causing an annoying drop with optical. Going to tv first via hdmi and then out TV optical fixed it. Now I use Roku - DirectvNow streaming and sound quality through the same method went up huge even though I hve the TV in the middle. The signal quality of the source matters a ton!
I think that can happen when the optical transmitter is so jittery, the downstream device can’t lock on the clock.
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A $5 optical cable is not going to give you a quality signal, good optical cables can run in the $100s. Although the Lifatec is well respected. http://www.lifatec.com/toslink2.html
In a good audio system everything matters, and using a cheap source will not give you good results. Although if you are handy and willing to put it together, the Raspberry Pi with the optional Allo board, can play well above it’s price. I have been running one in my bedroom system, just using the Pi3 running Volumio with a USB hard drive and it is not bad. Although I am using a Benchmark Dac2 HGC which is similar to the SGCD.
Whenever possible you will want to run a digital signal to your SGCD, the DAC chip in cheaper players isn’t the issue, as much as the analog section. I took a look at the Yamaha, the Oppos can be used in a HT system, while the Yamaha is strictly 2 channel. It is something to consider, as the current Oppos are much more flexible.
Hey CXP, you really shouldn’t be making blanket statements about SMPS power supplies. Cheap ones can be noisy, but there are manufacturers like Chord and Lindemann that use them in very expensive products. Chord makes a series of amps that are very good. I have a friend who uses two of them in his HT system, best HT that I have heard, speakers are all Vandersteen, Rel sub, and source is an Oppo, through a Cambridge pre-pro.
Whatever you choose for streaming, be sure it is able to stream Tidal.
I have been using lifatec for about ten years. I’ve compared it to a number of cables in that price range and there’s no comparison, I can use this with my DSD and miss nothing relevant. Excellent cable.
I actually bought a DH Labs toslink cable about 5 years ago, to use with my Polk XRt12 XM Satellite Tuner. I wasn’t aware of the Lifatec at the time. I think I paid about $70 for it from Upscale.
I bought the Polk tuner off of eBay for around $60, it was a decent deal as most are missing the remote, and more importantly the antenna, which uses an odd plug.
I bought it because they were streaming the Grateful Dead 50th anniversary shows from Chicago on the 24/7 GD channel.
Later I did try it with my PWT, against my Music Metre Fidelus digital cable with RCA plugs. It was decent, but the MM Fidelus was better.
Ted had got me thinking about optical cables, and I would like to compare a high end optical to a AQ Diamond someday.
I have no experience with DHLabs . . . they could be great.