spdif vs toslink

Thanks....I am using a Yamaha UW10 interface going to an old Audio Research Dac1...it sounds OK...but not as good as my dearly departed ipod...I have not bought an external drive to store my wav files and am just running it off the drive that is in the Dell computer. Does the hard drive have any impact on the quality of the sound?...I am an analog guy trying to get into the digital world so thanks for your patience....

I sent the ipod back to apple for repair. Considering the thing last only a month I figured they'd just give me a new one, but no such luck. I do like the itunes software so something good came out of the experience. I have and AES/EBU input on my DAC3...how do I get that out of my computer?

Thanks for the card link...16,000 songs! What kind of music are you listening to?...a bit of everything I guess.
Maybe I am missing something! For me its jazz and mostly 60s soul/r&b...and a very selective amount of "classic" country from my teenage days in radio...but that's another post...