To address your question about toslink vs. coaxial: they both transmit the same spdif standard information so it's a matter of preference and what your equipment has. Some say that optical is more prone to jitter, but with jitter correction circuitry I'm sure you can see how any differences would be minimized to insignificant levels. A bit is a bit is a bit.
Two other commonly found digital audio transmission protocols are AES/EBU (which uses a balanced cable) and ADAT (which uses the exact same toslink fiber optic cable but has capacity for up to 8 audio channels).
Make sense?
Now to confuse matters even more, to get the ABSOLUTE best performance out of a digital audio setup you should use a master clock device such as the Apogee Big Ben:
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/bigben.php
Yep, all that $1500 device does is generate ultra-accurate clock signals. Not many consumer DAC's offer word clock sync, perhaps because it's easy to reclock a single source more accurately than to synchronize multiple bidirectional audio streams that one might see in the studio. That's part of the home audio design I've never seen.
Henryhk, if you think about how quickly audio standards and software updates are happening, would you really want to be locked in to one manufacturer's way of doing things? The Linn and McIntosh units are definitely for people with massive disposable incomes that aren't familiar with computers. If that's you, then go for it and let us know. There's a lot more power and flexibility in going with a more open system, though.
Two other commonly found digital audio transmission protocols are AES/EBU (which uses a balanced cable) and ADAT (which uses the exact same toslink fiber optic cable but has capacity for up to 8 audio channels).
Make sense?
Now to confuse matters even more, to get the ABSOLUTE best performance out of a digital audio setup you should use a master clock device such as the Apogee Big Ben:
http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/bigben.php
Yep, all that $1500 device does is generate ultra-accurate clock signals. Not many consumer DAC's offer word clock sync, perhaps because it's easy to reclock a single source more accurately than to synchronize multiple bidirectional audio streams that one might see in the studio. That's part of the home audio design I've never seen.
Henryhk, if you think about how quickly audio standards and software updates are happening, would you really want to be locked in to one manufacturer's way of doing things? The Linn and McIntosh units are definitely for people with massive disposable incomes that aren't familiar with computers. If that's you, then go for it and let us know. There's a lot more power and flexibility in going with a more open system, though.