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 once read a story where a mastering engineer claimed he could tell whether it was a Maxtor or a Western Digital HD attached to his DAW. He was probably making a joke. The key factors with drives is the interface and platter rotation speed. Any recent vintage HD with ATA, IDE, Firewire, USB 2 or SCSI and 7200 rpm platters will have no problems with the playback of two channel audio.

As far as optical vs. non-optical, my experience is that balanced AES/EBU is definitely superior to optical.

Did you have Apple replace the dead iPod?

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?

Ntscdan, they'll probably give you a refurbished iPod.

I've had very good experiences with RME audio cards. Their 96 Series offers AES/EBU balanced outputs and goes for about $400. I think it's the best way to go, but might want to try the glass optical cable first.

I totally agree that iTunes is a very slick piece of software. I use it as the centerpiece of my digtial audio setup (Apple G5 with 650 Gb of storage - about 16,000 songs).

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...