Suggestions for a reasonably flexible 1m long digital coaxial cable for around $200 that is well shielded from RF and sounds good? Also, where can I reliably buy the suggested cable from?
Listen to Al. Either go very short to avoid reflections on impedance boundaries or go 1.5m with typical transport transition time that is about 25ns. Assuming threshold in the half of that reflection from the end of the cable (started by the beginning of the transition) has to come later than 12.5ns. Assuming 2/3 of the speed of light signal travels thru 1.5m forth and back (total of 3m) in 15ns just missing threshold point. 1m cable would be much worse bringing reflection in about 10ns - just before signal crossing the threshold. Any disturbance of transition at the threshold will convert to time jitter (equivalent to noise in frequency domain).
Digital cable behaves like transmission line (reflections) when one way propagation time to point of first possible reflection (end of cable) is shorter than 1/8 of transition time (rule of thumb) - about 3ns in our case making for 0.6m. 0.5m cable should be safe but I would go no longer than 12" (as Al stated) since driver is in few inch distance from the connector.
What happens when you have reflections? What do you hear? Ideal length for me would be maybe 0.7m I think, but need to measure. I have a 1m cheap cable currently working.
1.5 will work ok, but i will have to coil it up at one end. So what to buy and from where? $200 or so, good quality and sound, flexible and well shielded from RF.
Kijanki: Would that also apply for a word clock cable. I have a Esoteric player that accepts a 10mhz signal and I'm running a 3m length BNC-BNC 75ohm digital cable from the external word clock?.
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