Toslink or 110 ohm aes/ebu?

Why do you feel toslink is worst? In my opinion coax is the most aggravating, uncertain and ultra dependent upon construction choices whereas an optical wire with standard materials is very consistent and not prone to electrical interference (which the coax is very susceptible to). All I can dig up in archives is reviewers comments that toslink cable does not form tight connection and in their rearrangement practices of pulling components and plugging new wires they may inadvertently pull the toslink cable out. To those I say- execrcise greater care and arrange the wiring neatly. Im my own experience, I have always preferred the richness and bass performance of toslink connection, while the coax has resulted in anemic sound in majority of set-ups. I do concede that a well designed, insulated and tight tolerances in impedance of connectors can bring the coax connection on a par with most toslink cables and offer "real tight" gripping power (you can almost lift components from one end) which the reviewers yearn for.

Toslink was measured to have on average twice jitter of coax. It is because of additional conversions to light and back and relatively slow optoelectronics.

I have no clue how Toslink can improve your bass performance since it affects only jitter and jitter is basically noise in time domain. Lower amount of noise might create impression of anemic sound the way clean jazz guitar sounds less dynamic than distorted guitar.

Stereophile magazine presented jitter measurements in the article "Jitter Games" where they stated "Critical listeners agree that the Toslink sounds substantially inferior to coaxial"

You can also find jitter measurements showing twice more jitter for Toslink here: http://www.monarchyaudio.com/DIP4.htm

"Stereophile magazine presented jitter measurements in the article "Jitter Games" where they stated "Critical listeners agree that the Toslink sounds substantially inferior to coaxial"

Since S'phile says so- it is gospel! Its funny that the same rag eschews measurements as not being reflective of performance but when it suits their purpose, they pull the measuremens argument to support their flimsy conclusions. All probably done to allow manufacturers a rationale for marketing overpriced coax cables. Trust your ears, go with what sounds better to you. The previous argument is similar to the one where LP users love the sound due to the additional distortions in the medium, makes it warm and fuzzy..

In spite of your suggestion of Stereophile dishonesty I would rather trust their opinion then yours. Monarchy (second link) that measured jitter does not have any interest one way or another.

There are valid technical reasons why Toslink is worse. In order to have low jitter good transport is needed. Good transport have most likely transitions (coax output) in order of 10ns (average transport about 25ns) and limited bandwidth of Toslink causes smearing edges and introducing jitter especially when system noise is present. Regular Toslink has bandwidth of 6MHz reaching 9MHz for very good one. It is too low to output fast transitions.

It is all system dependent especially when Toslink breaks ground loops and I don't question that Toslink might sound better to you - just speaking in general terms.

Ive had a couple cec transports over the years .Ive run aes cables and ive run coax .Ive never used toslink before just cause of myth of them .Just remember this ,CEC has a transformer in the curcuit for aes/ebu to convert it.CEC has always recommended to use the coax out to any dac based on thats how they built the transport around ,although I used some great big name aes cables and loved it, the coax always beat it out in long run. So to answer your post heres the order. 1 coax, 2 aes ,3 glass,4 toslink , call anyone who repairs the cec and they will confer.Remember the less hardware in curcuit the better