I have also experienced differences between digial COAX cables. I will agree that the Blue Jeans / Beldon 1694A makes an excellent COAX cable --for the money-- (like janehamble said). I'm sure there are better (based on other posting), but for $20-30 it is extremely difficult to beat. It is a very natural sounding digital cable with extraordinary resolution.
Based on all my research, there are a few elements which dictate how good a digital able is:
- terminations: 75ohm. The BNC connectors are superior, but most can only use RCA. However, it's important to get as close to 75ohm terminations as possible. This includes how the cable/termination is shielded (COAX cable and termination plug). It has an effect on signal reflections as well.
- length. It is suggested 1.5 meters is the best/minimum length to reduce the effect of signal refection on the main digital signal. I use 6 feet.
- composition. This is one area where silver is superior to all others. In my opinion, silver is sometimes beneficial in analog, but mostly I believe it is not a good thing. However, in digital transmissions, you want a medium that is able to charge and discharge extremely fast. This gives better accuracy on the timing and form of the digital square wave signals and also reduces the effect of signal reflections back to the source.
Janehamble has very good success with the Audioquest Carbon, which is silver-plated solid-core. I have heard excellent results from DH Labs Silver Sonic D-750, which is also silver-plated solid core. I suspect the Wire World cables, starting with Starlight 7 and above, may also perform very well. The Wire geometry is "almost" solid-core in a sense that they have several solid-core wires side-by-side like a ribbon cable. It's not quite true solid-core, but it's not as stranded bundle either (bad).
It's been on my list, but I would like to build the following cable sometime in the future:
- VH Labs Pulsar AG OCC Silver / airlock. 2 meters at $170 (with 15% discount for 2 meters). 24 awg solid core OCC silver with an extremely low dielectric airlock insulation (no absorption of high frequency energy!). This is a coax design with silver-plated copper braid shield.
- DH Labs RCA-750 terminations $24 plus shipping from ebay. This is the best digital termination I could find that is closest to the true 75 ohm design. It requires soldering the wire to the center pin. I believe this design is going to be superior to any other RCA connector (that are usually designed for analog audio purposes).
I think this cable would be highly superior to many other cables (even those significantly more expensive). I'm not going to buy a $1,000 cable for comparison, but the theory makes sense to me. For $200, it would be a heck of a cable.