@retiredaudioguy I am not here to argue with you but it absolutely matters how digital signal gets to the dac. Toslink in my experience is inferior to spdif or USB all things being equal. Different units own clock priority. Digital cables do matter, including Ethernet ones. Even with your Esoteric DAC.
In addition, your Aurender and BS streamers each have proprietary DSP with Aurender caching the stream onto SSD prior to sending it out to the DAC and BS buffering the stream. Add to that the fact that you don’t know the master files being used from presto and SSD.
But then again you heard no difference on top of all this with Flac from Aurender vs Presto stream thru BS. Consider yourself lucky.
How can different CAT5/6 cables affect sound.
While is is beyond doubt that analog cables affect sound quality and SPDIF, TOSlink and AES/EBU can effect SQ, depending on the buffering and clocking of the DAC, I am at a loss to find an explanation for how different CAT5 cables can affect the sound.
The signals over cat5 are transmitted using the TCP protocol. This protocol is error correcting, each packet contains a header with a checksum. If the receiver gets the same checksum then it acknowledges the packet. If no acknowledgement is received in the timeout interval the sender resends the packet. Packets may be received out of order and the receiver must correctly sequence the packets.
Thus, unless the cable is hopeless (in which case nothing works) the receiver has an exact copy of the data sent from the sender, AND there is NO timing information associated with TCP. The receiver must then be dependent on its internal clock for timing.
That is different with SPDIF, clocking data is included in the stream, that is why sources (e.g. high end Aurenders) have very accurate and low jitter OCXO clocks and can sound better then USB connections into DACs with less precise clocks.
Am I missing something as many people hear differences with different patch cords?
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To add…if I am not mistaken, toslink will result in synchronous clocking meaning your DAC clock will synchronize with the digital signal that’s output of your streamer or transport. Same goes for SPDIF. So whatever jitter is passed from BS streamer clock to DAC will impact the final result. Even with Esoteric. You can’t bombard your DAC with jitter and expect the same results as you would get with a clean signal. As to Ethernet cables, I’ve tried several and they all work but don’t sound the same. |
TOSLink and USB are connection systems, whereas S/PDIF Is a communications protocol. S/PDIF was developed in the early 80s, specifically to support the then-new CD format. It was never revised in the ensuing half-century (almost). It does not support either hi-res PCM or DSD. It can safely be considered obsolete at this point. |
@devinplombier incorrect SPDIF supports high resolution. Both my previous DAC Bricasti M3 and my current DAC Meitner MA3i accept high resolution via SPDIF. The Aurender N200 streamer outputs PCM 24/192 via coax out. |
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