TOSLINK Optical vs Coaxial for CD transport to DAC

Yes coax is generally better than toslink. What is your budget for a new cable?

Optical is typically inferior. It is because the circuitry on both sides are electronic, so conversion to optical and back to electrical is required. In all but purpose built expensive components off the shelf optical/electrical converters are used and as a consequence have low quality sound characteristics. There are some high end companies using optical as a way of reducing noice... but these are far between.

Ultimately it will have to do with how good your system is at resolving. So, for instance my TV to Soundbar is run on optical. It is not obvious. But pretty low resolution application. 

The only way you will know is to try, as the difference will depend on the quality of receivers in the DAC for various inputs. Such differences, in an ideally engineered DAC, will be small to none, typically far less than differences heard when moving your speakers by six inches or so.

While poor optical interfaces certainly exist, some users find that by using optical, transmission of noise between components is reduced. So, perhaps you can borrow an inexpensive SPDIF coax cable and listen for yourself.

@audphile1 

I'm not willing to spend much, (at least in audiophile standards) that said I just recently bought the Veritas Aperta SE speaker cables. I am very impressed with them, and Veritas has there Nexum C digital S/PDIF cable at $299 for 1.5m. I am thinking of trying it to compare to my optical cable. With a 30-day money back trial period, takes the gamble of the equation.

@ghdprentice 

Thank you for the technical explanation, that makes sense. I like to think my system (Simaudio Moon 600i integrated amp into Focal L&R Utopia Be loudspeakers) is a rather resolving system. 

OP mentioned using Toslink, this is perhaps the worst interface for dac. Don't confuse this with optical networking, two entirely different things. Only streaming dacs will have optical network input.