New here, and best wishes for the new year for you all. I have a related question. I just bought a Pioneer U-05 DAC/preamplifier to replace my old Quad 33 pre amplifier and the various DACs built into my digital sources (Chromecast audio, old BluRay player and Panasonic plasma TV - I no longer have analogue sources). I thought it was about time to integrate the lot with a modern pre amp with digital inputs. The Pioneer has two optical and two coaxial inputs, plus usb and AES/EBU. I had checked the various manuals for the type of digital connections on the sources (I could not easily get to the back of the units), but when I tried to connect the BD player I discovered that it did not have the coaxial output that the manual said that it has (just optical). So I a now have three sources with optical outputs and two inputs. I know there are converters to convert optical to coaxial, but wondered if they degrade the signal, and if so, how badly. The TV has the least quality audio signal (it is quite heavily compressed cable TV) so I could use the conversion on that source. Are there any data?
The rest of the system is quite revealing, with a Quad 606-2 power amplifer, Quad 2805 electrostats and a B&W PV1d subwoofer tamed by an Antimode 8033 dsp room eq unit.