Digital connections

hi,
as i'm thinking about plunging into the wonderful world of dacs i though i'd better ask about what all these digital connections are all about...
ok we have aes, coax, toslink and at&t (st)
coax and toslink i think i understand however aes and st are still a bit murky to me so...
1) can an aes input be used with a coax out via a converter or suitably terminated cable or are they completely different?
2) is there any advantage to using aes
3) similarly can at&t be used with toslink (via a converter or suitably terminated lead) or are they totally different.
4) is there an advantage to using at&t over toslink?

i think that's it.
cheers


julian

 

There's BNC as well of course (assuming by coax you mean RCA-Phono).

 

1) - yes I should think so, via an isolation transformer but it will have to do the impedance conversion (110ohms to 75ohms) aswell. I think there are converters like that out there. I think there'd be very little point to this though unless you had to do it for connector availability reasons.

2) - if you use aes at each end, yes, in theory at least because you get a proper 110ohm connection.

3) & 4) I don't know as I don't know anything about the AT&T standard.

Michael.

 

Yes - and BNC has the same advantage as aes, ie, a proper 75ohm connection. BNC is, according to many people, the theoretically best connection and TOSlink the worst. All depends on the hardware being used though.

Michael.