Digital coaxial vs optical

stonebeard wrote: Analog, obviously. I removed the passenger seat from my car and installed a Denon DP-A100 player with a Yamaha AS2000 stereo. I'm running Monster wire connections and have a surge protector rigged through 4 cigarette lighters in my car. Needless to say, I had to upgrade the car's battery, but that was only $350 more. I had to tear apart the whole passenger quarter of the car to add the proper acoustic treatment to keep the whole thing from vibrating, which Auralex did for only $3,000. Naturally my Saturn's sound system is sh*t, so I have a pair of Sony R10s that I wear at all times while driving. Really, anything less and you might as well pack it in.

Why use 4 cigarette lighters? It's just as easy & a lot neater to run 12 gauge wire (+ve and earth) directly from the battery (following the existing wiring loom through the bulkheads where necessary) and put your surge protection, power switch and reservoir caps in the cab close to your 110v inverter - of course you could use a portable Honda generator in the boot (trunk?) but that would require extra sound-proofing. Also, I hope you upgraded your alternator as well as the battery, otherwise you have to recharge the battery every night to keep it topped-up. Following Oliver's advice on vibration I also suggest filling your shock absorbers with concrete, and perhaps your tyres too.

Whether you use co-ax or optical to carry the digital data stream it makes no difference to the sound at all (ever) - in theory the optical TOSLINK connectors are more reliable than the RCA connectors used on the co-ax cable, but in practice I've not know that to cause any problems.

So you bought your dedicated home amp? Did you compared it against the output of your integrated home amp?

Analog, obviously. I removed the passenger seat from my car and installed a Denon DP-A100 player with a Yamaha AS2000 stereo. I'm running Monster wire connections and have a surge protector rigged through 4 cigarette lighters in my car. Needless to say, I had to upgrade the car's battery, but that was only $350 more. I had to tear apart the whole passenger quarter of the car to add the proper acoustic treatment to keep the whole thing from vibrating, which Auralex did for only $3,000. Naturally my Saturn's sound system is sh*t, so I have a pair of Sony R10s that I wear at all times while driving.

Really, anything less and you might as well pack it in.


Edited by stonebeard - June 17 2011 at 01:49