Jitter and 75ohm cable length


I have read a number of papers on how cable length plays a role in Jitter between transport and DAC. After all of the dust settled I arrived at no sound conclusion, on paper, so I decided to use the ears of my 17 year old budding Audiophile to settle this by LISTENING! My transport is a Wadia 171i (WAV/LossLess files)and my DAC is a Cambridge AZURE 840C. I had three cables in my test, my 1M Kimber D-60 illuminations, a 3' HAVE/Canare and a 6' HAVE/Canare. All three cables sounded good, but in the end the victory landed on the 3' HAVE/Canare by a fair margin followed by the Kimber and last the 6'HAVE/Canare. In my readings I came across a number of articles saying you should use at least 1.5M of cable to reduce reflections in the cable so as to not harm the clock signal, yet an RF engineer said this was a bunch of "Bunk" and 1M would be better, in fact he said the shorter the better. So, forgive my verbosity, what are your thoughts and experience in this area? My 3' $25 HAVE/Canare beat up my $390 Kimber, I believe due to proper honest 75ohm terminations vs standard RCA connectors, and as far as length goes, at least in my system, 3' was by far the best. Thanks!
Rpg
rpg
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!
In the ending, the Toslink was a poor solution to any 75ohm cable I tried. I don't want to begin suggesting I can do the math on cable length and it's contribution to Jitter, I can only finish this by saying that my 36" length of HAVE/Canare 75ohm digital cable with Canare 75ohm terminations resulted in my Wadia 171i sounding as good as my CDP with only the very slightest of differences, and that is as good in my opinion as one can get. Gone are the spinning disks and hello little music server! My thanks to all that have contributed to this forum!
Rpg
One last Cliff Note to compress this entire forum. The bottom line is if your using a 75ohm coax between your transport and DAC, it's length should be 12" or less, or at least 1.5M and above, but nothing between these two lengths. I tried everything with the exception of 12" or less. What I found was my 1.75M cable could not compare in sound quality to my 36" cable from the same manufacturer. Now maybe my system is unique in some way. I would trust the words of those who have contributed to this topic, but in the end, trust your ears!
Rpg
@almarg 

this a huge thread lift but i have searched almost the whole internet for reliable info if 1,5 meters length for a word.clock BNC 75 ohm cables is the way to go to restist any refections or is the shortest one the better choice like on a circut board?
(I am using dCS Puccini DAC + Puccini Master U-Clock ( word.clock ) + the new dCS Network Bridge Streamer ) 

( The EE at dCS responded the shorter the better and i asked if you did not get reflections and phase loop problem , but his oppinion was shorter the better word.clock sync BNC cable) 

Please replay and chade som light on your thaughts. 🙏🏻🙏🏻

// Fredrik