Do digital cables differ to analoge cables

Actually, no. There is a theoretical difference but despite having several dedicated digital cables, I am using standard interconnect between my transport and DAC. I am a Van den Hul dealer and have both their digital cable , although not the very expensive one, and and regular ones and find the Second and The First Ultimate to be better than the $250 digital. But be warned, cables can sound very different and are very system dependent and are a matter of personal choice. Above poster correct, optical only useful for extremely long runs. Try your standard cables and see what you think.

K_Rose

Digital cable has characteristic impedance of 75 Ohm for unbalanced and 110 Ohm for balanced cables. Proper impedance matching is important because digital signal of high slew rate reflects on impedance boundaries causing jitter (noise in time domain). Digital cable is also constructed differently: it uses cheap copper, often silver plated, since signal at high frequencies travel only on the surface (skin effect). Shield is grounded on both ends and used as a return/GND - not very good for analog.

You could use analog cable as digital if you don't hear the difference caused by impedance mismatch (short cable, low slew rate from CDP, jitter rejecting DAC). If you use digital cable the optimum might be 1.5m (reflections timing). Coax will give you better performance than Toslink (fiberoptics) unless you have ground loops that Tosling breaks (being optical).

Thank Everybody