Thunderbolt vs. SPDIF - Is the newer Thunderbolt better quality?

[jp008]

So I'm reading today the Thunderbolt connection is touting 40gbps, even leaving USB 3.0 in the dust at 5gbps, but what about SPDIF (75ohm coax) ? Does the Thunderbolt provide better quality over SPDIF

[jp008]

I'm guessing there's probably only just better latency.

[EvilDragon]

Better quality of WHAT, exactly? SPDIF can transfer different types of data.

It's just faster, many times faster.

[jp008]

Better quality of WHAT, exactly?

Yep, that's what I thought. I mean, get it.. no conversion or it's just digital data being sent. I'm wondering if that actually does anything to quality levels though because I've never owned anything that uses Thunderbolt. I'm guessing the SPDIF even on my ancient Hammerfall 9636 wouldn't be any different, since the latency is already as low as like 3ms..

[Jim Roseberry]

The easiest way to think about Thunderbolt is to consider it "external PCIe".
That's exactly what it provides (external access to the PCIe bus).

Thus, it has zero effect on S/PDIF quality, audio fidelity, or similar.

What Thunderbolt allows (under ideal circumstances) is PCIe level performance.
This can allow extremely low round-trip latency.
ie: The Presonus Quantum can achieve 1ms total round-trip latency (96k using a 32-sample ASIO buffer size).

[jonljacobi]

Thunderbolt is just a connection/communication technology. PCIe over an external wire. It has exactly zero to do with sound quality. That will all depend on your AD/DA converters, and the preamps if you’re recording.

[Tj Shredder]

Spdif carries two channels. Thunderbolt is able to carry more channels as the biggest studio in the world and video on top of it, but not as long...
Get a basic understanding of technology. Your question is a bit like what tastes better if I carry the food with a bike or with a train... (Answer: a car stinks but would do it, as any other way would...)

[BertKoor]

These are quite different connections.

Spdif is like a digital audio cable. It connects (presumably) your audio interface to something else with spdif: a home receiver, dolby digital amp, fancy monitors, or whatever. There's coax and optical which is simular protocol as ADAT (8 ch or 4 if run at 96kHz)
With spdif you're skipping the DAC in your audio interface and use DAC of the receiver. Which is better? That's another question.. My guess is you won't notice.

Thunderbolt cables sit inbetween pc and interface. So you can have both! Pc -> tb -> interface -> spdif -> receiver.

[EdgarRothermich]

Two different things

SPDIF is an interface standard for doing one thing, transfer a digital audio signal, either 2-channel PCM or compressed surround from one device to another device (one directional)

Thunderbolt is is an interface standard for general data transfer (bi-directional)