Jitter and 75ohm cable length

Rpg, 1 meter is about 39.37 inches. And of course 12 inches = 1 foot.

Therefore 3' is about (12 x 3)/39.37 = 0.91 meters, which DOES NOT conform to the length recommendation.

6' is about (12 x 6)/39.37 = 1.83 meters, which DOES conform to the length recommendation.

I've talked about these cables earlier choosing the 3' cable as the champ, but now I'm finding the 6' cable easier to listen to. How can this be explained and may the 6' rout look better on paper and on the ears.

Chances are that less jitter is present with the 6' length, but as explained earlier that is not a certainty. Also, as explained in the section entitled "Jitter Correlation to Audibility" in the Steve Nugent paper I linked to a few posts above, depending on its spectral (frequency) characteristics jitter can sometimes be euphonic in character, and/or mask or compensate for inaccuracies elsewhere in the system.

So the bottom line obviously is to try to decide based on listening, but I would say that if the cables sound different but neither can be determined with confidence to be "better," chances are it would be best to go with the longer one.

Regards,
-- Al

Al, thanks, I appreciate your work in helping me understand this. I think in the end, as I may have mentioned, the 6' cable is easier on the ears. With this cable manufacturer, I can order any length, is there an "ideal" length, or are there too many system dependencies to determine this?

Again,
Thanks!

With this cable manufacturer, I can order any length, is there an "ideal" length, or are there too many system dependencies to determine this?

Summarizing all that has been said, I would put it that a length of 1.5 meters (which is virtually the same as 5 feet, to within less than an inch), stands a better chance of being ideal than any other length. But as have been cited there are many system dependencies and cable type dependencies which conceivably could result in other lengths being better in some cases.

In this case, if you decide that the 6' cable you have is preferable to the 3' cable, my suspicion is that changing the 6' cable to a 5' cable of the same type would be unlikely to make a significant difference.

Regards,
-- Al

Al, thank you very much - most appreciated!

Another twist. I noticed that my web of IC's (All unshielded Kimber silver SE and one balanced)could use some housework, so I spent quite some time rerouting and spacing the cables resulting in what I would call "neat and tidy. Then it happened, the great sound I had achieved through many learnings on this forum were gone, my transport sounded lousy and in the end I was back at the beginning! I discovered something about my DI-IC, it does not like to be close to any AC lines or any lines for that matter as well as not liking to be forced into a configuration that does not follow it's natural form as manufactured. Long story short, I ended up finding my 3' cable slightly outperforming my 6' line because I "think" I was able to doge the bullets mentioned even though the cable is double sheilded (it was very close). Now I'm wondering, after all of this effort might a Toslink cable be a better solution? I currently possess only one midgrade Toslink IC and it's in my AV set-up. I have heard that the process of converting the signal to light and then reconverting it back to an electrical signal at the DAC results in low bandwidth problems, but might it be immune to most of the potential problems one can encounter with wire? Interested in your thoughts. I'm heading off to my AV set-up to assess what kind of nightmare I'm looking at in retrieving an Acoustic Research Toslink cable. Thanks all!