I wondered what the general opinion about using Coaxial or optical connections? I have a Sony DVD336 which has both outputs, and a Sony minidisc which has both type inputs (well 3 types if you include analogue I guess!) and I wanted to record Audio CDs to Minidisc. I know it's no doubt better to use a dedicated CD audio player, but I don't have one right now, I got a DVD player instead hoping to kill two birds with one stone.

Thanks.


sorry to post here and in the digital audio forum, but no one seems to go there these days

The quality of audio is very similar with both Coaxial and optical. I wouldn't worry either one you use will be excellent (as good as can be for CD --> MD transition) Personally i'd go for optical but if you have an Dolby digital amp you may want to consider using the optical connection between the amp and DVD and the coaxial connection between the DVD and MD.

Much debate on this one. I have a coax & an optical lead connected between my amp & dvd and I CAN tell a difference, but only very slight and only beacuse I keep flicking inbetween them.

I'd recommend coax simply because I do prefer the warmer sound that it seems to bring and optical requires the signal to be converted from a digital signal, into projected light, then back into a digital signal whereas coax is a pure bitstream signal.

The hifi mags always recomend co-ax over optical for the best sound reproduction

I just read an article in Personal Computer World about optical versus coaxial. Both seem very similar indeed. It notes that coaxial must use a high quality lead otherwise errors can occur, and long leads are not likely to work well. So I guess there's little in it.