Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Help - How to make my digital music work??

Two big investmensts are going south ;-(

First I made a big investment in time to wire an optical TOSLINK cable from my computer to my 200 dollar Sony receiver - over a 60 foot run - that investment intially worked great but..

A couple of weeks ago I paid 900 dollar for a NAD 753 receiver and when I got it home it would not read the feed from the computer. Have been playing around with this for a couple of weeks and can't get it to work - girlfriend ( who was already sceptical of 'upgrade' is now thinking I have screw loose.....)

The NAD receiver plays the optical output from my CD player fine - it just cannot cope with the one from the computer over an extended cable run - initally I suspected it was a problem with sampling rates but have now ruled this out - in fact, if I take the NAD receiver and place it beside the computer with a 3 feet run, it can read the ouput from the computer - however over a 60 foot run it cannot hack it - the strange thing is that the Sony can do it just fine, and actually produces a fine sound from it. On the basis that the NAD was slightly less sensitive than the Sony, I bought an optical signal amplifer box but this hasn't worked.

I am a bit stumped about what to do now - I expect NAD will claim a problem with my extended cable and say that their receiver is working - however its just not doing the job for me so I think it has to go back - the store also sell Pioneer and Marantz but I went for NAD becuase I am very much focussed on music rather than home theater.

I could keep the Sony and use it for decoding but it would sit there making a mockery of my decision to upgrade to the NAD - also when the Sony is decoding music from digital it will only send the analog outputs to the headphone jack on the front ( or the speakers obviously) - what with two boxes rather than one and a messy cable, the WAF.......


( In fact I would probably have bought an integrated stereo amp if it wasn't for the requirement to decode digital music - are there any other devices out there which will do this cost effectively? the only options I see are for 350 bucks plus which was what drove me to buying a receiver in the first place )

Sorry for the long post but I am a bit frustrated at this point - I just thought I would post before backing up the 50 pound receiver and lugging it in a cab down to the shop.

Seems to me that everyone knows someone with a crappy old computer lying around somewhere. Stick the crappy computer beside the NAD, run a short TOSLINK cable, store all your audio stuff there and control it via XP remote desktop...

There are probably better solutions but I wouldn't give up on the NAD yet. You can probably also find TOSLINK repeaters (rather than just amplifiers) to get the signal back into spec but I don't know where to look.

One last thing -- did you have the amplifier at the computer end ? If not you should -- seems like they work better at the driving end of the cable than at the receiving end...

PM, although there're no specific limits, 60 feet is longer than is usually suggested for the maximum Toslink run. Apparently your Sony has a very good optical converter(or at least better than the NAD). The optical amp should have helped the NAD, though(are we talking about the same thing, like this ?). Also, if you had to use an optical output, you could have considered feeding it to a optical-coaxial converter and then running about 60 feet of coax to your receiver. Still further, there's no good reason to believe that the NAD will somehow be better for music than the Pioneer, Marantz or other similar receivers. The goal is transparent amplification of sound, whether it's music or movie, a violin or a machine gun.

Yep - we are talking about the optical amplifer you linked to. My main remaining option is the optical-coax converter route you mention - not sure how much to spend on one - found links to models which sell for 30 bucks and 80 bucks - as a computer guy I would like to think that both convert all the bits faithfully or they don't leave the factory - though as you know in the audio world, some manufacturers hint that one digital is better than another.

In reply to the other post, I am using the optical amplifier at the 10 foot cable coming out of computer going into another 50 foot run - pretty much within the specs which come with it.

PM, yes those converters are also available here. You appear to have connected the optical amp correctly and I'm surprised that the NAD still wasn't adequate. Although a receiver's optical input is relatively simple technologically, it's possible that your sample is somehow defective(although it worked with a short optical cable)and a replacement should be tried.