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The Importance of the Digital Cable

Good Sunday evening dear friends,

This point of discussion has been on my mind of late, as I have listened carefully to the results. This is a bold statement and discussed ad nauseam here I am sure, though I feel others may be encouraged to explore this more deeply as we share our experiences here.

I’ve had several digital cables, ranging from several coax, to toslink. I have not yet tried a dedicated AES/EBU XLR.

Listening to the Denafrips Pontus, a ladder DAC, fed from an Oppo UDP-205 as transport, I was compelled to try a few different cables, because the results were not as good as expected. I played a few albums; XTC ‘Nonesuch’ - a rather hot recording from the 90’s but very interesting and politically out front. Then an Everett Harp CD that highlights his wonderful sax playing. Then Robben Ford and The Blue Line, the album being ‘handful of Blues’.After that some Arjit Singh, and Tarkan (Turkish music).
The cables running from the DAC to the Pre/amp are Transparent Ultra XL (original). I like these cables because they have a very natural organic sound. They do lack some of the detail up top of some of the best in class and perhaps are a less exciting that some, but over all I love the naturalness, slight warmth in mid-bass, scale and soundstage of their sound.
But things didn’t sound quite right. I can always tell when something isn’t quite right, because it’s harder for me to get involved in the music. Some of the quieter words were too vague, and there was just a general fuzziness and vagueness overall. The soundstage was flatter and resolution of detail was lacking. The Pontus as you know, is a very good DAC, so I knew something was off.

I had the Canare digital cable in place, and decided to switch it out for my Black Cat Veloce. Wow! The sound transformed. Now the DAC truly shined. All the detail returned. The sound was certain and clear. The soundstage was very wide and the vagueness replaced with clarity. The music was now exciting and involving.

This begs the question, how can a digital cable make such a difference? After all, it is transporting a digital binary signal?
Please share your experiences.
AK
4afsanakhan
tomic601's avatar
tomic601
12,911 posts
 
I use a variety of AQ, Nordost, Cardas and Kimber cables across 3 systems and a mobile recording rack. All manner of cables; Ethernet, SP/DIF, Optical, etc….to exotic 128v dbs speaker wire.

My journey is my own. i make no assertion i am Einstein.

For brevity  on just Sp/dif. I agree BNC both ends IF your gear supports it, learn to solder if it does not. I don’t care for bnc to rca adapters, others may disagree. My DAC is very intolerant of them.

In a nutshell AQ Eagle Eye vs Nordost Silver Shadow has AQ being much more neutral but ultimately a touch less resolving. The Shadow is punchy and more “ Hi-Fi “. Bit of etched treble as might be characterized as the Nordost house sound. Ultimately i have both w different DACs for system synergy ; AQ w Aesthetix and Nordost w Lampizator.

Enjoy the music.

Jim
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yuviarora's avatar
yuviarora
537 posts
 
USB if done right, is a great  way to connect your PC to your DAC. 
However, outside of a quality USB cable, another thing to look at is a dedicated USB Card  with a linear of battery power supply. You do not  want to use system power, it causes all sorts of issues. 
I have a Matrix USB 3.0 card, connected to a deep cycle 12V battery, using Neotech Legenburg 20 gauge OCC Copper cables. Even the quality of the metal of the DC plug used changes the sound coming out of your speakers, use pure copper ones if you can. 

Everything in the Audio Chain affects sound, every connecter, piece of  wire, capacitors, inductors, Fuses, cables, shielding.... you name it :)
It's pretty fascinating really :)


aubreybobb
87 posts
 
Those of you who use fibre for digital should be aware that older transducers use LED's which are slow and not very accurate - the electronics are pretty poor too.  I guess most toslink falls into this category. Unfortunately, this pretty much negates the advantage one would expect from the abscence of rfi/emi interference that fibre promises.

Newer ones use lasers and high quality electronics and combine this with good glass (instead of plastic) cable.  The improvement, in my opinion, is about like going from the lower models in a copper range to very near the top.    Doesn't break the bank.  Top quality for a set of transceivers and glass cable is around USD 200- 300/- not thousands!

Of course you have to have sfp ports in your equipment for best results. 

If no sfp ports, there is a workaround - one can use video converters also (v cheap) at either end of the path.  This helps, but it is more complex in terms of cabling and components, and the result is not quite as spectacular. 

Hope this is useful
Best wishes 


audio-union's avatar
audio-union
179 posts
 
I am a multiple disciplinary engineer, I manufacture and I make my own cables.  All my personal speaker, interconnects and digital cables are silver. The value of my cable loom exceeds the value of the components in my system.

My USB cable has no solder joints in it at all. Solder joints increase the possibility of signal degradation.  Speaking of signal degradation, just transmitting a signal through a conductor changes the signal. The question is, how much, can you hear the difference, and what can you do to change it. Then there is the question of the environment and how much it is influencing the conduction of the signal through the conductor. Shielding can be a good thing or a bad thing and it all depends on how it is implemented.

The concepts of what is "better" and "quality" when making a choice, which starts with the senses and the brain ending up including psychoacoustics and just how good is your hearing, in this case, drives purchase decisions and appreciation of a product in a system.

I chose a custom made biaxial cable with premium connectors for the connection between CD transport and DAC using SPDIF ports. I chose a custom USB between my custom built computer and my DAC. I made these choices because they are what works best IMO in my system based on testing.
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