110 ohm Digital cable with 75 ohm input and output

Al- thanks for the considered response. Yeah, running a 110 ohm cable between two 75 ohm terminations sounds goofy to me too. But I'm listening to it now, and it sounds quite good.

I don't understand why anyone would purposely design a cable that uses three conductors, is intended for a balanced 110 ohm characteristic, and wire it unbalanced using RCAs.

I don't understand why anyone would purposely design a cable that uses three conductors, is intended for a balanced 110 ohm characteristic, and wire it unbalanced using RCAs.

If a manufacturer did that, a non-cynical guess would be that perhaps in the particular case the cable does have a 75 ohm characteristic impedance when connected unbalanced. Although that would surprise me.

A more cynical guess would be that perhaps the motivation was to make the cable sound as different as possible from competitive 75 ohm cables, in as many systems as possible.

Or perhaps it was just the result of practical considerations involving not wanting to do additional design and development work, or having already designed a 75 ohm cable which proved to be unsatisfactory for some reason, or cost or availability of whatever wire and other materials the designer preferred, or wanting to use wire he already had in house, or tooling considerations, etc.

Lots of possibilities.

Best regards,
-- Al

"Yeah, running a 110 ohm cable between two 75 ohm terminations sounds goofy to me too. But I'm listening to it now, and it sounds quite good. "

You're assuming the 110 ohm cable sounds good because of the higher impedance. That may, or may not be the case. There could be something else in the cables design that accounts for the better SQ. If you can, try some different cables and compare results.

I never said better SQ-

The other digital cables I have in house are Belden 1694A and Black Cat

The Belden and Black Cat do not sound identical. Black Cat is the smoothest, the Belden the most dynamic and this 110 ohm cable? Somewhere between the two

Change better to different. Its still pretty much the same thing.