Why do digital cables sound different?

After 11 years this thread is still alive. I didn't read all the response but I try to give you my contribution. I think The hirez music could have impact on the digital cable position into the system chain. The high frequencies and the amount of bit resolution need of cable capable to maintain the impedence between entire path. So, I think which digital cable could affect sound not as well as PC cable, for example, but in consistency way. Recently I had to replace Stealth varidig with Oracle MA. The difference was not like night and day, but in term of "resolution ".

This is a topic that gives me a flashbacks to circuits 101, 35 years ago. It was a difficult concept to grasp, even after completing 5 Calculus and 3 Physics courses, but let's simplify it into one expression, dynamic change. Any time you change the signal characteristics the sound will be different; that is the inherent nature of sound produced from electrical pulses. Digital cables are required to be Impedance matching at 75 ohms. There is no exact 75 ohm Impedance, since it changes with frequency and can be altered by materials and construction. The acceptance of the change is in the ear of the listener as to what sounds better. Coaxial cables will have more variation for interpretation.

In my opinion, optical cables should be a more stable pulse. However, most listeners feel that they are to brittle sounding. This is probably true unless you have a very smooth tuned DAC circuit converter. This leads us back to your personal taste as to what is more accurate. Comments are welcome.

Lvhjr1, Optical cables don't have problem of jitter cause by reflections on impedance boundaries but rather from jitter being result of system noise affecting slow transitions (inherent to low slew rate of transmitters). Noise also affects transition of signal thru receiver's threshold (causing jitter) in coaxial cables, but much less because transitions are faster.

As verified by the sonic signature of sound changing obviously with power cables, not just digital cables, changes to the electricity itself must occur from the material that it is going through.

A topic that's been beat to death, but IMO there is no audible difference between one digital cable and another. One toslink optical cable works just as well as another for carrying bits. Same with coax RCA. Same with balanced AES. Same with USB. Spending more than $20 on a digital cable is money down the toilet, and anyone who claims they can hear a difference between two different brands is full of baloney.