Digital And Analogue Cables

@blisshifi you hit the nail on the head. "Digital cables" transmit packets that are mapped to 0's and 1's with a different voltage levels and those voltage levels vary continuously during the transmission, due to power fluctuation, EMI, and various other influences. RCA single ended interconnect does the same (in all honesty it is questionable whether RCA cables can do sine wave without distortion, no jagged edges), transmits voltage variation. I haven't heard that someone is referring to Ethernet cable as digital, and it does exactly the same thing. It seems that it was pushed through via cable manufacturers to market cables as digital and sell them for digital music easier. In technical terms, probably the closest to a digital cable is optic cable, light=1 no_light=0. Another bone for us HiFi hobbyist to chew on.🫣

@ghasley I appreciate your respect, and no offense is taken. I’ll be the first to admit that I myself still have much to learn about the engineering side of audio. I am at least lucky to consider myself curious and want to gain experience and expertise wherever possible!

Thank you for your clarification and coaching. :)

@pegolea @blisshifi

@pegolea it isn’t that simple. Google the AES3 (AES/EBU = Audio Engineering Society/European Broadcast Union) standard. As they say, timing is everything. The consumer standard is called Spdif. Virtually identical although most anyone with ears will tell you that even though the data fed through AES/EBU, BNC, RCA SPDIF and Toslink Spdif are identical at the source, they ABSOLUTELY will NOT sound the same. Not close. Toslink carries lower noise but is more susceptible to jitter induced problems. AES/EBU via 110 ohms (xlr) in many cases presents the best opportunity for the fewest compromises. BNC is best for longer distances.

There are no absolutes because it depends on the individual dac’s optimation of how it accepts the data and of course, USB and Ethernet is different because packets, error correction and clocking happens differently, usually at the receiver whereas AES/EBU-SPDIF most often happens at the source.

In summary though, most dacs are quite good. Some however, really lock in and exploit their strengths. Some engineers are quite a bit more advanced in their thinking. Read up but more than anything, trust your ears by optimizing your streaming chain. Matching the strengths of a particular streamer with the strengths of a particular dac maximizes your oppotunities for success.

@ghasley Nicely said! And many times the audible differences in those interfaces are due to differences (improvements and fallacies in signal preservation, impedance, shielding, and grounding) in cable designs (e.g. one Coax can sound vastly different from the next), or that the destination’s handles something a bit different from one interface to the other, even if they are all using SPDIF. 

@blisshifi indeed.