COAX VS OPTICAL CABLES

Coaxial is preferred. Cardas High Speed Digital is good-- about $80. new, and Cardas Lightning even better, about $220. new. Craig

I still remember from my EE Electromagnetic class that optical cable has almost no transmission line loss.

Craig is correct. If you have the cash, Acoustic Zen MC2 is hard to beat ($300 new, used ???, check Audiogon daily!)

don't waste your $$ . get belden 1695 and put some canare Coax RCAs on it. save your $300 and get the same performance.
rhyno

Optical cables sound better with longer length, such as 10 meter.

While optical cables may have minimal line loss, the same can not be said for the digital to optical convertor on the "playback" unit or the conversion from optical back to digital on the "recording" unit. Why not stay digital from deck to deck and then finally convert it to analogue upon playback ??? Sean
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Sorry rhyno, that is just wishful thinking. Having carefully tested around 10 different coax cables and after owning 5 different brands of coax cable, I can say with certainty, they do not sound the same. Granted you may get a decent sound your way, but decent does not equal perfectly matched to optimize performance on a particular system.

The interface makes the difference. IME a good coaxial sounds best especially with BNC terminations.