2. digital
  3. 139886-13434

Why does my DAC sound so much better after upgrading digital SPDIF cable?

I like my Mps5 playback designs sacd/CD player but also use it as a DAC so that I can use my OPPO as a transport to play 24-96 and other high res files I burn to dvd-audio discs.

I was using a nordost silver shadow digital spdif cable between the transport and my dac as I felt it was more transparent and better treble than a higher priced audioquest digital cable a dealer had me audition.

I recently received the Synergistic Research Galileo new SX UEF digital cable.  Immediately I recognized that i was hearing far better bass, soundstage, and instrument separation than I had ever heard with high res files (non sacd),

While I am obviously impressed with this high end digital cable and strongly encourage others to audition it, I am puzzled how the cable transporting digital information to my DAC from my transport makes such a big difference.

The DAC take the digital information and shapes the sound so why should the cable providing it the info be so important. I would think any competently built digital cable would be adequate....I get the cable from the DAC to the preamp and preamp to amp matter but would think the cable to the DAC would be much less important.

I will now experiment to see if using the external transport to send red book CD files to my playback mps5 sounds better than using the transport inside the mps5 itself.

The MPS5 sounds pretty great for ca and awesome with SACD so doubt external transport will be improvement for redhook cds


karmapolice
mzkmxcv
777 posts
 
@boxer12

Soundstage width is an aspect of the recording, the speakers, and the room. So it depends what aspect you want to measure. For speakers, it’s simply directivty, how attenuated the signal gets off-axis.

Soundstage depth is done via time/amplitude/phase alterations. A perfect binaural recording for instance played on “perfect” headphones would perfectly replicate our natural hearing. 

Instrument separation is simply just a combination.

So yes.
chrisg1000
30 posts
 
Wow. I really didn’t want to go there. And, while having lurked here for many years I’m new to posting. I don’t know this individual. But, I can see  why people share a negative opinion of this person. It’s like talking to a know-it-all brick wall. I’ll run some tests and verify that. 🙄
mzkmxcv
777 posts
 
@chrisg1000

I was asked a question so I answered. What makes a speaker have good soundstage width is actually a pretty simple question, so nothing really to debate.

Again, what I don’t know, is why you are hearing a difference; it’s not jitter as we established your DAC is good enough (which is the original argument I had with @audioengr), but I did hypothesis that maybe it’s a grounding issue with your amp (which is only excited with the cheaper cable as maybe it didn’t meet transmission specs (which is common, especially for microUSB, even Anker don’t meet standards), which could be checked with a multimeter.
chrisg1000
30 posts
 
Lol. There’s one more possibility...

And I never said it was a cheaper cable. 
mzkmxcv
777 posts
 
@chrisg1000  
  
Well, I would like to hear the possibility; other than “sounding better”, because you still didn’t explain what differences you heard.
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