Long Coaxial audio run?

Audioengr,

Thanks for your answer.

So much loss of quality even though it would be a digital signal to the DAC?

Regards,
8^0

Vvrinc - I spend a LOT of time on the forums educating audiophiles about one of the most pervasive problems with digital audio, and that is Jitter.

Digital audio is comprised of two elements, the data words and the timing of these data words. The two cannot be separated because the D/A conversion of the digital datastream must have both elements. The data must be delivered to the D/A without error and the timing must be recovered or generated so that timing variations are minimized (jitter). This attempts to matche the timing of the original A/D that was performed in the studio with a low-jitter clock. These clocks are critically important for both A/D and D/A.

Here are some white papers I wrote for PFonline that tell more about this:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue22/nugent.htm

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue14/spdif.htm

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

So much loss of quality even though it would be a digital signal to the DAC?

The benchmark DAC1 claims to be able to work with a 1000 feet of Cat 5 cable but that is the only one I have seen making such claims. Any digital interface seems to suffer from jitter and longer runs are worse. It can vary from barely audible or subtle to plain bad and each situation is different so it is hard to predict. Good power conditioning seems to help. You need a reclocker or get a DAC that you think can handle it....and test it thoroughly by A/B short versus long runs to satisfy yourself it is doing its job.

Thanks to you both for the most generous advice.

That jitter stuff is, I guess, only OK if you have a career in pole-dancing!

Regards,
8^(

Is USB effected by all this "Jitter" for example a laptop connected to a USB Dac with like a 15 foot USB Cable etc…?