My usually well informed high-end home theater dealer tells me that I should be using the digital coax connections to my Denon AVR-2308CI receiver rather than the optical connections. The reason is that you are "supposedly" going to get better sound through the coax connection.

Now I thought since they were both digital, it shouldn't really make a difference, and I currently am using the optical ports for my cable box and DVD player.

I'm curious if anyone here has heard similar claims and if there might be anything to it - or should we call out the Myth Busters?

Frankly I'm too busy (ok, lazy) to do a proper A/B comparison myself, but I may be forced to if someone doesn't have a good response.

My usually well informed high-end home theater dealer tells me that I should be using the digital coax connections to my Denon AVR-2308CI receiver rather than the optical connections. The reason is that you are "supposedly" going to get better sound through the coax connection.

Now I thought since they were both digital, it shouldn't really make a difference, and I currently am using the optical ports for my cable box and DVD player.

I'm curious if anyone here has heard similar claims and if there might be anything to it - or should we call out the Myth Busters?

Frankly I'm too busy (ok, lazy) to do a proper A/B comparison myself, but I may be forced to if someone doesn't have a good response.
You are correct, there is NO difference.

I have heard the same thing, but it doesnt make much sense to me either as far as sound quality. If the format for the audio stream is the same, the transport medium should not make a difference as long as its not such a long run that its dropping bits. If I was doing a 50 foot run and had my choice I would run coax because I believe that does do longer runs before degrading. But if its a short run between components I would expect them to be identical.

If thats not the case, and there are real differences I'd love to learn about it.

This was debated not too terribly long ago in this forum in a pretty long thread. Basically, you are correct that there should theoretically be no difference between the two. Now, is it possible that on any given box, one or the other may be of inferior quality, certainly. However, I think it is absurd to make a blanket statement that either is consistently better than the other. I think you're fine with just the optical--but if you're like me and just have to test it for yourself, go for it.

both will be the same... if i had to bend it around some nasty corners, i'd use coax, only because toslink can be a bit fragile... ymmv...

They should both be the same. The format is identical. The only thing that differs is transmission method.

I use coax always because:
1) it's cheaper
2) easy to run in walls, very difficult to damage
3) connection is more secure
4) coax is well shielded anyway, so the benefits of optical cable there for this type of signal is largely moot. And in any case, if you're running hundreds of feet, see #1, optical would be godawfully expensive, and coax should more than suffice.

After thinking about this I could imagine there may have been some specific equipment where this may have been true due to some design flaw, but it would not make sense for it to apply generally. I expect Denon would do a better job than that.

Thanks for all the confirmation. I'll stop obsessing over this.

Only benefit I have seen is optical eliminates ground loops since there is no electrical connection.

This can be handy if you have a cable box who's coax feed in improperly grounded and causes hum.