CO2 optical/coax converter - any signal degredation?

S

Shazukura

New member
Does anyone have any knowledge about the Midiman CO2? The sparse "manual" that came with it provides no technical data so I'm not sure excactly how this thing works....

I'm using it to connect my Motif's optical out to my recorder which has coax. I can set my Motif to 20bit or 24bit digital, but I'm not sure what the CO2 runs at, and if I ever decide to use my recorder's S/PDIF out to put the signal into an optical audio card in my PC (for example) what would be the implications of running at 24-bit, 96kHz?

Sorry if these seem like dumb questions, but Midiman isn't much help on this one. Even my *Motif* manual is better for crying out loud! :)

-Shaz
 
related question

Whilst I'm asking these digital questions I'm interested also in the quality of digital cables. Is there any difference between a Hosa and a Monster optical cable? (other than price and durability - I'm focused on audio quality here.) I know ther eis a difference in coax cables, but I'm not sure what the implications are, exactly...

-Shaz
 
For the second question,
Go for the Monster ones; I didn't use the Hosas (nor did I use the Monsters) but it seems like the Hosas are not liked much.

My two cents,
Beathoven
 
Big B,

I can definately see and understand why that applies with analog cables, but if I have an optical cable that never has to endure abuse, how can the extra expense of a "good" cable change anything? Isn't that the point of digital? Especially with optical -- how can one cable be any "better" (sonically) than any other cable?

I guess with a coax cable, it's "digital" in a different way. Analog line currents are syncronized to a "word clock" so that the analog line current fluctuations can be interpreted as digital data, so a bad cable could infact corrupt the 1's and 0's I guess (but aren't there layers of "line encoding" to ensure a lower incidence of errors?)

-Shaz

PS - but mostly I'm curious about that silly CO2 converter box, and what IT does to my audio signals.

:)
 
if I have an optical cable that never has to endure abuse, how can the extra expense of a "good" cable change anything?
Click to expand...

The only thing that might be factor is that the cheaper cable might be made of lower quality materials which could mean more variance in results...


But, hey, what do I know?

Vice
 
Beathoven said:
it seems like the Hosas are not liked much.

My two cents,
Beathoven
Click to expand...

I like mine okay. Because they came free w/my Mackie. Plus I have to like them because I need all the money I can get to expand what I have with quality stuff, not upgrade the stuff I have now.
 
Bump

Is there no voice of reason or authority out there? :)

I guess I should be happy that the CO2 sounds better than 500-series Monster line cables, but I'd still like to get some definitive answers on A - How the CO2 actually works with different input signals (and what does it output?) and weather any truncating occurs in the process, and B - how in god's name can an expensive optical cable transmit a "better" signal than a cheapo (like a Hosa?) I mean light doesn't attenuate or have any inherent impedence or voltage right?

Should I be posing these questions to Cecil Adams instead?

-Shaz
 
If you are transferring digital data, all that matters is that all the data gets transferred. The fancy cables will not "sound" any better (nor worse). If the cable works reliably, then it works, and the result is identical no matter how much gold is in or how low-oxygen it is
 
>I mean light doesn't attenuate

It sure does attenuate! Have you ever viewed the difference in luminosity between car headlights at 10 feet and those same lights at 100 feet?

From this article:
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/audio/spdif.html

"There also an optical version of S/PDIF interface which is usually called Toslink, because uses Toslink optical components. The transmission media is 1 mm plastic fiber and the signals are trasmitted using visible light (red transmitting LED). The optical signals have exactly the same format as the electrical S/PDIF signals, they are just converted to light signals (light on/off). Because high light signal attenuation in the Toslink fiberoptic cable, the transmission distance available using this technique is less than 10 meters (with some equipments only few meters)."


I have two S/PDIF cables. One is a gold-plated ends S/PDIF cable (not a Monster, but it was about $15). Since I use this in both directions, I got tired of unplugging and replugging the cable as needed so I picked up a cheapo video cable with RCA ends (~$5). There is no difference in the quality of the signal, but occasionally I'll have to wiggle the plug in the jack to get the receiving end to recognize that there is something plugged in.

When I buy my next S/PDIF cable it's gonna be that gold-plated stuff. Till then I rearranged my studio to make the jacks more accessible. Not only those jacks, but EVERY connection is now in plain sight. No more standing on my head with a flashlight!
 
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Shaz....

My digital PB is coming in tomorrow afterwhich I'll do some bit tests on it and my CO3 to see if it'll pass a word size higher than 16-bit......

The CO3 is a bit different than the CO2, but if the CO3 doesn't do >16-bit, then you can bet the CO2 doesn't either!

I'll let you know.......

Bruce
 
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