Battle of the cables and speakers... (1 Viewer)

[Brad Craig]

Round 1:
Okay I keep hearing mixed reviews on what is better when concerning DIGITAL COAX vs FIBER OPTIC...
Has there in any way, shape, or form, been a testing of the two to find out which one really is better than the other... I can get a digital coax at Radio Shack for $15 vs a fiber optic cable for $30...
Plus I have heard that the DIGITAL COAX is better due to not worrying about the bending of the wire and whanot when compared to fiber optic, so I find it hard to believe the superior cable is cheaper...
By the way the guy at Radio Shack said (in his opinion) the fiber optic cable sounded much more clearer...
Any opinions???
Round 2:
Okay this one will be more harder for me to describe so I will do my best...
Is a satellite speaker every bit as good as a big speaker???
For example, can a 3 inch by 3 inch satellite speaker let say, be just as every bit as good as a 3 ft tall/10 inch wide/3-way/6" single or dual woofer big speaker???
I mean wouldn't the bigger speaker broaden you audio waves and/or soundstage and thus fill the room w/ better acoustics???
I mean is there a point where satellite is dominated or can satellite speakers stand their own w/ any bigger box type speakers???
I guess I'm just amazed such a tiny speaker has a chance against the big dawgs as I like to call them...

 

[Bill Catherall]

Round 1: I have never seen any test that gives the results as definitely one being better than the other. I say buy them both and do your own test. This will be even better than someone else's review because it will be on your equipment...the real factors of the test. Even if an optical cable was better than a coax, you might not hear it if you don't have the right equipment. After performing your own tests then you can return the one you don't want.

Round 2: It really depends on how well the speakers are designed. A well engineered satellite would probably outperform a poorly engineered tower. There's more to speakers than just their size. One would think that bigger is better, but it isn't always the case. But...a well engineered tower will most always outperform a well engineered satellite.

 

[Brad Craig]

Way to go Bill >>> All vague and indecisive...
Okay lets say the speakers we're both quality speakers and made by the same company...
Which would you choose and why??? Also am I right in the bigger speakers broaden your soundstage??? I mean lets say you we're trying to convince someone to go w/ bigger speakers vs satellite , what is your selling point??? AKA why are you saying this great quality big speaker is better than that great quality satellite speaker???
And please don't say " To save space"... :p

 

[John Sully]

Round 1: I recently saw a Q&A on another site (can't remember which, sorry). The reviewer said that he preferred coax because it was 1) cheaper and 2) had a more reliable physical connector. Nothing about coax sounds better than optical, he said that he couldn't hear any difference.

In my experience coax is cheaper, I've never noticed any trouble getting the optical connecters to mate properly, but then I don't tend to hook new components into my system all the time, either.

Round 2: I've heard good and bad examples of each. In general, given equally high quality speakers towers will have greater bass extension than sats, but there are a whole bunch of tradeoffs which can be made by the designer. Neither design is inherently superior, especially in these days of high quality and affordable subwoofers.

Round 2.5: The sats will probably out image the towers, but it depends on the design of the towers. Many towers today use fsirly small or side firing woofers which allows the front baffle to be fairly small. The small front baffle helps to reduce diffraction effects from the tweeter and thereby improves imaging.

I guess the best answer to your question is: "it depends".

 

[Denward]

the guy at Radio Shack said (in his opinion) the fiber optic cable sounded much more clearer

Maybe he's trying to sell you the more expensive cable??

From a pure scientific POV, the argument generally goes that digital is digital whether it's transferred via EM (coax) or optical signal. Some will say that coax is more susceptible to other EM interference, but remember, we're not talking about a sensitive analog signal. The coax is cheaper and seems more durable. As others have said, the only real way to know is to do the Pepsi Challenge.

Sats vs. Towers - IMO, sat speakers are an engineering compromise to make speakers more decor friendly. That tells me that the engineer designing a sat is more limited in what he is allowed to do. Therefore, in general, all other things being 'equal', towers should sound better than sats.

 

[Bill Catherall]

All vague and indecisive...

That's what you get when you ask subjective questions.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Round 1: Coaxial vs Fiber
Home Theater magazine did a comparison of several coaxial digital cables and several fiber optic cables in a article entitled "Bits are Bits??".
There was no conclusion which type of cable sounded better, but they did discover:
- The coaxial cables all sounded nearly identical.
- One of the fiber optic cables sounded different from the others.
So it seems the quality-control for fiber optic cables is not as consistant as it it for coaxial cables.

.. so I find it hard to believe the superior cable is cheaper...

Brad, you have a big problem if you think price always dictates quality. The price you pay is rarely based on the cost/quality of the item. (We can get into this, but there is enough material for a different thread).
The coaxial cable we are talking about is a VIDEO cable. These have been manufactured for years and years so they are dirt-cheap. The SPDIF specification for the DVD players wanted you to go out and buy a very common/cheap cable to help get DVD players adopted into the mainstream.
Round 2: Small vs large speakers
Size is not a good indication of sound quality. For a woofer, the cabinent enclosure is a factor, but monitor-style speakers dont include woofers so this is a un-fair comparison.
Human hearing is most sensitive around 12,000 hz. This is the area where the mid-range driver of a speaker works. It is very easy to put these drivers in small or large cabinents.
(Are you looking for recomendations? Just ask.)
Now you say "3 inch". Are you talking Bose?
Most speakers give you a 1" tweeter and a 3-6" mid-range driver. Bose did some clever engineering and put a single over-sized tweeter in a little cube. Where most speakers use 2-3 drivers to reproduce sounds, Bose made a single driver handle everything. (SO they give you less, and charge you MORE!)
Is it cute? Yes.
Does it appeal to women who dont want large speakers? Yes.
Does it sound good? Yes.
Does it sound good compared to regular speakers? No.
When you start studying/auditioning speakers, Bose fails to live up to the same criteria applied to the rest of the industry. But thats fine, because Bose spends 3-4 times their engineering budget on Marketing, and they target the elderly with disposable income & reduced hearing capacity. Not the audiophile community. So they are a great Business success, not a great technological success.
The other issue: Placement.
Putting all 3 drivers (tweeter/midrange/woofer) in the same cabinent is traditional, but is not best for the sound.
The woofers tend to sound smoother/cleaner next to a long, un-broken wall. But the midrange/tweeters sound best pulled into the room away from the walls. Using a external subwoofer and monitor style speakers can probably give you a better sound in most rooms than a traditional tower speaker system.
Hope this helps.

 

[MichaelGomez]

This was just mentioned in AVI or TPV (I don't remember which). Anyway they both had trade offs.

Optical- More expensive, don't bend, most important-they use light to transfer the signal. Sometimes this can cause a delay in the sound vrs the picture. Now I am not talking about a full time delay. What I am talking about is if you hit pause or rewind a lot, sometimes the sound won't kick in right away.

Coax-cheaper, bendable, but like mentioned above are sometime the cause of noise vibrations to enter your system.

I am personally using digital but when I bought them 3 years ago, everyone said they were the superior cable.

Hope this helps.

Mike

 

[Scott Page]

Guys! Whoa!

If I send a bunch of one's and zero's over a fiber optic line, then send the same one's and zero's over a digital coax line, which one will have the best sounding one's and zero's? Sounds silly now doesn't it. The answer is they should sound exactly the same. Digital is NOT like analog. As long as the little bits get there, then the cable used makes so difference to the DA converters. They cable does NOT change one's into zero's or zero's into one's. So what effect does the cable choice cause? Answer: NONE!

Save yourself the money and buy digital coax whenever possible. Buying expensive digital cable is throwing your money away.

As to the little speakers; as any woman will tell you - Bigger IS Better, to a point. Those little tiny speakers might have OK tweeters, but there is no way that the midrange can be properly reproduced. They end up moving the midrange frequencies to the subwoofer, which does a relatively poor job of it, and which also hurts it's bass performance. Those tiny speakers are all marketing hype.

 

[Ted Lee]

i also don't buy into the "optical is worse because of the connection" argument. i've got a monster optical that i bought at least 5 years ago. it works perfectly and the connections are as solid as when i bought it. admittedly, i don't throw it around, but i wouldn't say i baby it either.
in any case, you have to test for yourself and decide if you hear a difference...i'll bet your paycheck that you will not.
in regards to speaker size, i always hear that all things being equal, the bigger speaker will provide more bottom end. but that's about it. this is all about personal preference.
you gave bill a good jab for being indecisive, but he's TOTALLY right...this whole hobby is subjective and you'll need to decide for yourself what sounds best!

 

[Bill_Weinreich]

Optical vs Digital?

If I send a bunch of one's and zero's over a fiber optic line, then send the same one's and zero's over a digital coax line, which one will have the best sounding one's and zero's? Sounds silly now doesn't it. The answer is they should sound exactly the same. Digital is NOT like analog. As long as the little bits get there, then the cable used makes so difference to the DA converters. They cable does NOT change one's into zero's or zero's into one's. So what effect does the cable choice cause? Answer: NONE!

Not exactly true. Two effects can cause problems in both. Attenuation (reduction in amplitude) and Jitter (The "unsquareness" of the waveform). Capacitance and resistance can cause these in coax, and poor quaility and design can cause them in fiber. But the better the DAs, the more you can get away with. If there is too much loss than the DAs will not process that signal. So in MHO, either will work as well as the other providing they are quality.

 

[scottS]

Round 1: Bill makes a good point. The fact

that digital signalling involves transmitting

a representation of ones and zeros in no way

eliminates the problem of bad data. In general,

there is always some probability that a one

will be recognized incorrectly as a zero and

vice-versa (the bit error rate).

One problem with the DVD digital is that there

is no provision for error correcting codes

or re-transmission of bad data. All the

receiver can do is discard a bad packet.

For optical connections, note that cheap

plastic fibre is used, not the good stuff

used in networking or telephony. Also, the

TOSLINK connectors are cheap. Both of these

can adversely affect the optical power available

at the receivers.

That being said, I don't think it is possible to

make an objective comparison, without having

a known audio bitstream in the DVD player,

and sampling the output bitstream within the

amplifier to determine the error rate for

various coax or optical cables.

scott s.

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