splitting a digital signal

do you need to use Coax for both?  You could do optical for one, and coax for another. I doubt you'll hear a difference.

Yes, that was my plan. Use coax for both simultaneously. I've been led to believe that coax is better quality than optical, but maybe that's not the case?

According to some people. Why don’t you try it before you get too complicated? It has to be better than using a splitter, which would involve using a new device of variable quality.


Best,
E

Various coaxial SPDIF splitters employing active (powered) circuitry are available, but I have no idea as to the quality of the signal waveforms they would provide to the two destinations, and consequently the effects they may have on timing jitter at the point of D/A conversion and/or on digital noise that may be introduced into those components.

I would not use an unpowered device such as an RCA y-adapter for this purpose. It won’t hurt anything, and it **might** function, and it **might** provide somewhat reasonable results depending on the design of the specific equipment. But it would result in a drastic impedance mismatch, which at the RF frequencies that are present in SPDIF signals would result in signal reflections that stand a very good chance of degrading sonics. (See the Wikipedia writeup on "characteristic impedance"). And while I don’t doubt that some audiophiles have done that, and perhaps have achieved reasonable results in some cases, at best it would be very poor practice from a design standpoint.

+1 to Erik’s suggestion.

Good luck. Regards,

-- Al

Your impedance would be messed up and you will have reflection in your digital signal. May or may not sound good to you. 

Thank you all kindly for your responses! Based on feedback, I'm not inclined to try this. Even if it "kind" of works, just doesn't sound like an ideal way to go. I'm also guessing if it was something that worked well, I would have gotten the responses indicating so.
I naively thought, hey it's just ones and zeros traveling down that wire so even if split, they will still come out as ones and zeros!