Today i ordered an Apogee ensemble to use as an interface to use with my Macbook pro. What i was wondering was which cable had the best data transfer optical or firewire. I would like to use the optical to free up my 1 firewire port. I will be connecting the ensemble to my Bryston B100 with built in dac. It has optical or s/pdif inputs and would like some opinions on which of these might be better to use.
I currently am using the Apogee Duet for input and output. It sounds good, but i can not connect it to my dac. The optical out sounds much better when connected to my dac but have no input. I convert albums with my setup so i need the input capabilites.
Some insight would be greatly appreciated
I would also like some opinions on playback software. My choices would be P/V or Amarra. My concern is ease of setup and use.