I am using the thin RCA cables that came with it. The Node can also do optical, coax, and usb.
My Parasound Hint 6 has a built in dac of its own. It’s being bypassed by the Node dac via RCA.
Have you found better sound quality using one output over another?
I have both COAX and USB output to my DAC. I prefer the USB output. With USB, you cannot control volume on the node as it’s fixed. I have both because for movies with the ARC connection the source is coax so I can control volume - for music it’s USB and volume is controlled by preamp.