coolajami
Novice Member
Hi everyone.
This is may be a trivial question, but I've really cannot find the answer wherever I've looked! so here it goes:
I've have an office setup, where I'm connecting a MacBook Pro to a thunderbolt 3 Dock (Caldigit TS3+), that has an optical audio output, where I connect a set of active speakers with an optical cable.
What I cannot find anywhere, is that where the digital-analogue conversion happens on this setup, in the dock or in the speakers? (I suppose there is an integrated DAC on the Caldigit dock, because it has also an analogue output)
Tried to think this logically and I believe that, as long as the signal through the optical cable is digital, the final conversion will happen in the internal DAC of the speaker and the dock acts only as a "pass-through".
The reason I'm asking is that if I would like to buy an external DAC to connect to the dock, would be make any sense to have an optical output? Or if I'm getting an external DAC, shouldn't the output to be analogue at all cases, so you could get the best out of the DAC?
Sorry if my question sounds very stupid!
This is may be a trivial question, but I've really cannot find the answer wherever I've looked! so here it goes:
I've have an office setup, where I'm connecting a MacBook Pro to a thunderbolt 3 Dock (Caldigit TS3+), that has an optical audio output, where I connect a set of active speakers with an optical cable.
What I cannot find anywhere, is that where the digital-analogue conversion happens on this setup, in the dock or in the speakers? (I suppose there is an integrated DAC on the Caldigit dock, because it has also an analogue output)
Tried to think this logically and I believe that, as long as the signal through the optical cable is digital, the final conversion will happen in the internal DAC of the speaker and the dock acts only as a "pass-through".
The reason I'm asking is that if I would like to buy an external DAC to connect to the dock, would be make any sense to have an optical output? Or if I'm getting an external DAC, shouldn't the output to be analogue at all cases, so you could get the best out of the DAC?
Sorry if my question sounds very stupid!
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