Amphenol glass toslinks - First impressions

Mattzack2 - it sounds different because affect light transmission and therefore jitter. Jitter is a noise in time domain and affect clarity of the sound. Digital cables are in general better with jitter than toslinks but there are also jitter rejecting DACs (like Benchmark DAC1) where quality (or type) of cables or transport doesn't make any difference.

Mattzack2 - You're right. I was referring to coax (either 75 or 110 ohm). I don't consider fiber optics a cable (in electrical sense). I don't know much about USB. The reason for Toslink being inferior is slow voltage-light conversion and therefore longer edge that is more exposed to ambient noise on the receiver side.

Jitter rejecting DAC (like Benchmark) makes not only cables non-issue but also transport. I use the cheapest decent DVD player I could find ($60 Sony) with great results (and have DVD and MP3 playback + great tracking). Benchmark DAC1 has jitter bandwidth of just few Hz and at frequencies of interest (kHz) has way over 100dB rejection. Benchmark tested it with 1000' of cable - no audible difference.

Not every DAC labeled as "upsampling" is really that. Often companies use it instead of "oversampling". Bel Canto DAC3, if I remember correctly, have same jitter rejecting properties. As for the transport - as long as it is "bit-transparent" (no DSP processing or digital volume control) there will be no difference. It is big selling point of upsampling DACs but some people prefer to use NOS DACs - it's subjective. I found that stand alone, jitter rejecting DAC allows me to connect TV as well as computer (Benchmark has 3 digital inputs) and serves as preamp since it has volume control and input selector (I don't do analog).

Mattzack2 - What I said applies to "upsampling" DACs and not to your NOS DAC. With your DAC transport and cable will make big difference!