Obviously, the KISS engineering principle remains fundamentally sound, but comparing component video switching (involving a high bandwidth analog signal) to a format switch from electrical to optical with a digital signal is stretching beyond reasonableness.

Here's another way to look at it: any time you have an optical digital audio cable, there has to be a conversion to optical signal and back at either end of the optical cable. This conversion is one of the most common reasons that some people prefer coaxial digital audio, although many people also make the (very valid) claim that the conversion process is for all reasonable intents and purposes lossless. Going to an optical/coaxial converter is (aside from the coaxial digital audio cable) no different than using an optical cable to begin with.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

>>>reasonableness<<<<

Hmmmmm......

Anyway, there is no real "conversion" of the data, only of the data format in the optical to electrical translation process. As Gonk said, the video issue does not apply here since in that case we would be dealing with analog signals of very high frequency which need a very clean and controlled signal path. Digital video data would behave like digital audio data and it would be extremely immune to degredation. Data formats are converted constantly - take the internet for instance, and yet you don't see massive errors for the same reason you don't see massive errors in digital audio - error correction schemes.

To drhb- for me the DIP upsamlper was a cheap tweek, I have spent that much or more on some cables. I didn't do any blind testing, just my ears. In my rig, the change in sound was very noticeable. The DIP is not just a converter, it lowers jitter and upsamples. But you will have to make the upgrade decision for yourself.

I would have to agree with Gonk, in that on our field installs of a/v systems, nothing in the way of signal loss was noticed, (obviously not via double blind testing...), and moreover, logic suggests that conversion loss is a moot point since, as noted by Gonk, the conversion would occur anyway, at both ends of the toslink connection. Just wanted to get a consensus of what others thought....

”Data formats are converted constantly - take the internet for instance, and yet you don't see massive errors for the same reason you don't see massive errors in digital audio - error correction schemes.”

Digital audio (S/PDIF) does not use error correction. The S/PDIF receiver/decoder uses error concealment by repeating the last known good bit from a small buffer (up to 20 bits before dropping a frame) or in the case of a bad CRC a dropped 32 mSec audio frame.

Point taken, but I wasn't talking specifically about S/PDIF, but just in general terms that errors get corrected (or concealed, nullified, adjusted, un-modified, made good or whatever).

Hey, this ain't the IEEE bulletin board and some shooting from the hip is allowed in the process of making a general point for a general audience.

dig. coax would avoid the 2 conversions that optical creates...

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