Why do digital cables sound different?

Frogman, rather than challenge the fact that you hear the difference I will simply state what I know to be facts. While I most certainly do not have the trained ears of a musician, I think, (maybe wrongfully so) that God has blessed me with a decent set of ears. While I have not listened to a set of fiber optic cables, I can not discearn any real sonic differences between good quality copper (or silver etc.) cables. I also submit that the physics involved may not support sonic differences that are discearnable to my ears. I believe you when you say you can hear the differences, but maybe the differences are so subtle that one would need musican's ears to hear them. To quote Dennis Miller: "that's my opinion, I could be wrong".

Gmkowal I don't believe that you understand the signal transfer in CD playback. Most other digital transactions people have discussed are NOT real-time. CD playback is real-time. The protocol is one way with 44000 transmissions per second. Signal is lost. Bits are dropped. On other real-time digital aplications, say telephony, there is both a retry mechanism if the protocol allows and data recovery. CD protocol has no such provisions. Again rember this is technology that is almost 20 years old. The improvement in technology since the CD standard to the present is greater than the improvement in technology from Mr Bell And Edison to the start of CD technology. I suggest that your claimed knowledge of physics is flawed by your lack of understanding of this signal transfer. Before you go blasting a lot of other people, you'd better know what yo're talking about. As for some backgrtound, I've been working with digital audio on and off for over 30 years. I have spent over 8 years designing commercial digital audio and video and data transfer interfaces. So I'm not someone who has just read a few articles in StereoShill.

Gmkowal just a follow on my previous response. If you don't believe me, prove it yourself. Attach a scope to the output of your DAC. Play some test tones on your transport, ( Use frequencies above 8k that's where the effect starts to be more noticable). Get some different cables and measure the signals that come out of the DAC. I have measured some pretty significant differences. I've always believed if you can measure the difference, it exists.

Blues_man - Given the inadequacies of the CD protocol and your experience in the area of digital audio data transfer interfaces, what are the benefits brought to the environment by using a high-end digital interconnect over a basic, well-built digital interconnect? That was really the question at the beginning of this post, and I think we're all still curious. -Kirk

The problem is really in the transmitter and receiver. Even though there is a "standard", there are always difference in implementation of the hardware. I started out believing that there was no difference in digital cables. That was before I was familiar with the CD standard which isn't very robust. After a while I started measuring lots of cables and interfaces just out of curiosity. Its not easy to determine which cable sounds best with a particular transport / DAC combo. You have to rely on what other people have tried. First definitely goe with AES/EBU interface over RCA cable. It's not that much more. The one I liked best was the MIT reference. Its very expensive, $800, I believe its not worth the money but if cost is no object. I'll be putting the one I tested for sale here soon (at least half off). As I posted in another thread, the best thing is to get a Transport / DAC with a custom interface. I got the Spectral because I thought it sounded best. If you have access to a scope, use the method I suggested above with a high frequency tone. Whichever cable gives the most accurate signal is probably the best.