Speakers and optical connection

Question

Hi there,
I just got a new Mac Pro and I'm wondering if there are any audio/speaker solutions out there that allow you to use the optical out, which I assume is the cleaner, better way to connect.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Thanks.

Answer 1

The answer to your question about optical being noticeably better than analog is highly subjective.
IMO 98% of consumers would not notice the difference because their listening environment, the source material, and the combination of all the elements of their playback systems would combine to make it impossible to pick out the optical connection as the source for an improvement in sound quality.
Really, all that is happening is that you are depending on the D/A conversion of the speakers (logitech in this example) instead of the D/A converters built into the Mac. I would guess that both are very similar in quality, as they are both low-end consumer devices. I say that knowing that the logitechs seem expensive, and of course your MacPro is big $, but consumer devices try to do so many things that compromises are made in the pricing of the parts at the component level. They need to do this to make products that the majority of people can actually afford. In the case of the MacPro, Apple knows that the true high-end audio users (music production) are going to have commited after-market products to do their D/A conversion, so they don't need to put extra $ into the built in ones... I doubt many of the true, nose-in-the-air, audiophile types would consider a PC as an appropriate audio source when there are turntables, custom CD players that cost thousands, tube amplifiers, etc etc blah blah that only the true connoisseur would use...lol
Most consumers these days are listening to MP3s anyway, so your source material is compromised right from the beginning.
Most listening environments where a computer is being used are not optimised in order to hear that last 1-2% of "quality" difference that may or may not be linked to the cabling/connection type of the audio monitoring systems that are being used.
The real advantage you get from using the optical output is that it is the only way to get surround out of the Mac (without buying other after market gear) but your speaker system still needs to be capable of doing the decoding. Thats why the logitech system fills that niche. YMMV