Optical or Analogue to my new Bluenote Powernode

Just upgraded (I hope) to Musical Fidelity M2 scd CD player and Bluesound powernode (3).
CD player has both analogue and optical output. Bluesound has both analogue and optical input.
Advice on best connection method please. Thank you

 

I'm assuming you mean coax or optical digital outputs, not analogue.

The audio data is identical on both outputs, so there's no possible difference in sound quality.

However, an optical connection avoids any possibility of earth loops causing hum, so that may be preferred.

If you did mean analogue, then the CD player's own DAC is being used, which may be better or not than the one in the Powernode, although I can't see how there would be any audible difference between them, as DACs have been transparent for a very long time.

S

 

Many thanks for taking the trouble to reply. I’m going for the optical link from CD to Amp (optical out to optical in) following your points. General consensus being that at my age I probably can’t hear the difference between the two DACS.

 

I don't think differences between DACs are audible at any age!

S

 

Oh they very much are. My DPA Littlebit DAC sounds much better than the DAC in my Yamaha CDR-HD1500 when they are fed the same SPDIF signal from my PC's soundcard. Is it a digital thing? or differences in quality of the analogue output stages? or better grounding integrity in one of them? Who knows.... but they certainly sound different and the DPA sounds "warmer", "more analogue", less like hi fi and more like real music.

 

Whatever, Jez!

I'd be a lot more convinced if you had some results of some properly conducted blind listening tests, done with rigour and statistical validity.

I've never heard differences between DACs or CD players or amplifiers if the measurements were good.

S

 

We're going to keep disagreeing on this but hey that's life....

Cables of whatever variety obviously all sound the same within the predictions of physics ie a the capacitance of a long coax cable may well roll off top end and resistance of speaker cable will make a difference. These are simple 1st order effects and cables are completely "blameless" at audio frequencies. Fuses in mains circuits can NEVER have any effect, nor can mains cables themselves. "Grounding boxes" and such like.... well anyone stupid enough to think they even may help deserves to be ripped off really! Rather a pre Darwin Award purchase...
(Fuses DO have an effect when used as speaker/amplifier protection, ie when the output of a power amp has a fuse in line with it either in the power amp or in the speaker, and it is a negative effect. Strangely this is rarely mentioned)

Pre amps, phono stages (especially), power amps, DACs, ADC's, CD players, speakers, arms, cartridges, tuners etc etc can all sound different, sometimes very different, and once those differences which can be attributed to measurable issues have been eliminated, often obvious differences remain, which it seems we do not yet have measurements available to us to account for.

Have you ever probed around with a scope and followed the signal from input to output in a typical high feedback, low distortion amplifier? Often you will find GROSS distortion (maybe 30% or more!) and some bizarre looking waveforms generated by the feedback doing its stuff to generate "anti-distortion" (error signal) to counteract non linearity.... and this is just with a steady 1KHz sine wave!
When you consider the constantly changing nature of music with all those different frequencies and transients going on it does not surprise me at all that amplifiers can sound different.