HDMI cable for I2S


Well, the old upgrade itch had to be scratched, and even though it's a little behind the times now, I've invested in a refurbished PS Audio PWT and a used PWD MKII for my redbook CDs. The former is currently being assessed by the folks at PS Audio because it seemed unnaturally noisy when I received it, and the DAC hasn't actually arrived yet but should be here in the next day or so. So now that I can connect the two via HDMI using the I2S protocol, I need to stir up the old question of whether I'll get any advantage by shelling out some money for a high-quality HDMI cable? There's been a lot of verbiage devoted to this debate, but I would like to hear some real-world experiences. Have any of you compared different HDMI cables in this application, and did it make any difference? Of course one can carry this to its logical extreme, but I was thinking more along the lines of Audioquest Carbon (I use the coax versions of these in my system and think they're very good) or even their very modestly-priced Pearl cable. There's a Wire World Silver Starlight 7 available here on Audiogon just now, but I just can't work out whether it would make an audible difference over a standard (read: cheap) high-speed HDMI cable. Thanks for any input you may have on this.
BTW, speaking of logical extremes: http://www.audiolab.com/audioquest-diamond-hdmi-digital-audio-video-cable-with-ethernet/?utm_medium=...

cooper52
I was under the impression that HDMI and I2S are not compatible. But I am reading here that you can get a generic HDMI and use it as I2S cable. Is that right? 
i2s is a core digital interface communication protocol such as spdif.  It is not the same as the standard HDMI audio/video interface protocol.  However, in the case of companies such as PS Audio and Wyred 4 Sound, it uses the same HDMI cable as the connection.  Sometimes it will use a RJ45 Ethernet cable as the connection.
@auxinput,
Thank You for explaining. Does it mean that I can use the HDMI input from a Oppo UDP-205 and send the DSD output to PA Audio's DirectStream DAC?
Only if you use a USB cable (check with documentation on whether or not the Oppo will support DSD on the USB output).  Oppo does not have an i2s interface.
As auxinput said, i2s is a different interface than HDMI. But an HDMI cable is used to carry the clock signal separately from the data stream. The advantage is less jitter than SPDIF, which combines all data.