i am using asus p5w dh deluxe motherboard .. it comes with an optical slot (toslink cable) and the normal ones mostly in every motherboards.(see picture for reference) ..

i tried hooking up both to my sony system and the sound i get from both is the same .. (maybe its my ears)

just wondering if anyone can shed some lights on this ... will the digital ones give me better sound than the normal ones ?

could it be my toslink cable ? i bought it from pantip for 200 ! .. should i get better ones ?

thanx

It could be your ears, your Sony (or its speakers), the music you are trying to play, or even your room...

I have an old Yamaha A/V receiver and I could definitely hear the difference when I did some elaborate listening tests about 5 years ago. However, now in my current Thai-style room with too many hard surfaces (tile and glass), the acoustics are not so good and I have trouble telling the difference between the inputs for good CD audio material. But, with headphones I can still hear the differences between good and bad source material, so I don't think it is that my ears have gone bad...

Also, the digital output allows the option of DTS or Dolby Digital pass-through in most cases, so if you are playing DVDs with the right software you can get 5.1 surround sent to the audio system to be decoded there. That's a nice functional difference.

you will not hear a difference with a stereo source, as already mentioned the optical link is for Dolby D and DTS encoded source e.g movie DVD