Digital cable suggestions

[isuckedmandelsonslemons]

Hi all. I've just acquired a CD transport and DAC and obviously they need to be connected with a digital cable. I was given a Profigold Vision which I'm using at the mo. It sounds excellent but I realise it's a pretty cheap cable and I'm sure there'll be much better out there. I'm a big fan of Mark Grant's stuff but is there anything else I should be considering? Many thanks in advance.

[Ali Tait]

Supra Trico.

[Covenant]

NVA super sound pipe.

[DaveK]

NVA super sound pipe.

Not much use ATM but may be worthwhile making a note for later:
We used to have a very well thought of member here, now (very) sadly taking a sabbatical from forum activities, who used to make his own digital co-ax cables. A couple of years ago a selection of commercial and amateur members here held a cable bake-off in London, each cable being judged by all the competitors and his came out top against some very expensive boutique cables. Hopefully he will be back. Meanwhile another vote for MG from me but only on the basis of VFM as I cannot claim to have knowingly heard the other recommendations.
Dave.
PS. BTW Jerry I like the new avatar and a fitting tribute to a very funny (and local to you) man.

[Ali Tait]

Yes, Mike's cables are very good, Though I think the Supra just edges them IMHO.

[howardc1951]

How about one of Stanley Beresford's? On another forum he was talking about how much more it would cost to do today since the price of materials has gone up so much. I was using one of his co-axs until the co-ax output on my player died on me. Excellent cable.

[DaveK]

Further thoughts:
Take a look here: -

http://www.custom-hifi-cables.co.uk/home/audio-interconnects/digital-interconnect

TBH I do not have any of his digital co-ax cables but I do have his speaker cables and his new HA10 headphone amp and so can speak from experience of the SQ and standard of workmanshipn that comes with these. The speaker cables are as good as anything I have tried (and I've tried a few :lol: ) and are still in my system after more than a year - (fit and forget as one of our members regularly posts ;) ) - they are keepers!!
And IMHO his HA10 Heapphone amp is the equal or better than anything out there for under £1000 I would say.
FWIW I have no relationship with this company other than as a very satisfied customer.

[icehockeyboy]

Don't discount cables that are cheap, I have found that many are as good as, sometimes better than far more expensive stuff! :)

[Chops]

When I bought my QBD76 DAC, I compared Mark Grant's G1000HG (coax to BNC) with Chord Indigo Plus and the Chord was sufficiently better for me to buy it, despite the significant price difference. I was very surprised as I was definitely a sceptic regarding differences between digital cables.

Time has moved on and I would definitely give Mark's Oyaide digital cable a go now. A few people seem to use it.

Chris

[isuckedmandelsonslemons]

By way of an update. . .

I know he gets nothing but praise on here, but hats off once again to Mark Grant who supplied me with a Supra Trico cable with WBT silver connectors. Even gave me a bit of forum discount on what was already a stonking deal on this cable.

Normally I like to let a cable burn in (even though I'm not sure such a thing exists) before I make a decision, but there's no need here as this is so obviously much better than the Ecosse The Producer I was using.

I'm listening to Talking Heads at the moment and am gobsmacked at the extra detail especially on percussion.

This is my third cable purchase from Mark and I can't praise his customer service or products highly enough.

[magiccarpetride]

By way of an update. . .

I know he gets nothing but praise on here, but hats off once again to Mark Grant who supplied me with a Supra Trico cable with WBT silver connectors. Even gave me a bit of forum discount on what was already a stonking deal on this cable.

Normally I like to let a cable burn in (even though I'm not sure such a thing exists) before I make a decision, but there's no need here as this is so obviously much better than the Ecosse The Producer I was using.

I'm listening to Talking Heads at the moment and am gobsmacked at the extra detail especially on percussion.

This is my third cable purchase from Mark and I can't praise his customer service or products highly enough.

Does anyone have an explanation on how is it possible that two different brands of digital coax cables sound differently? I'm personally hearing huge differences between various brands, but am scratching my head as to what could contribute to these differences. It's digital, ain't it?

[Stratmangler]

It's digital, ain't it?

Nope!

[isuckedmandelsonslemons]

I'd be interested as well.

However there are people who say all mains cables sound the same, all interconnects sound the same and that you shouldn't spent more that six bob a metre on speaker cable. I'm thick so don't expect an answer from me. All I know is Talking in Tongues by Talking Heads has never sounded so good.

If cable burn in exists then I can't wait for the improvement.

Also I'm using four mono amps to biamp my Usher speakers. Apparently that's a waste of time as well.

Apologies if I've clouded the digital waters, I couldn't resist.

Harry

[isuckedmandelsonslemons]

Nope!

Bit of wire with plugs either end?

[magiccarpetride]

Bit of wire with plugs either end?

A series on ones-and-zeros enter on one end, that signal then travels across the wire, and is accepted at the other end. Upon entering the digital coax cable, the signal encoded as the series ones-and-zeros gets converted to a bunch of weak electrical signals. Upon being accepted, these weak electrical signals get declared as ones-and-zeros.

The above is how little uneducated minds, such as mine, imagine things to work. Assuming that errors can and will creep into the above process, how would those errors, or absence of errors thereof, affect the sound quality?

[Reid Malenfant]

Digital cables carry electrical pulses that are hopefully square waves. All cables suffer from capacitance from the centre conductor to the screen & the longer the cable is the more capacitance there will be.

While this capacitance will have next to zero effect on an audio signal which is a sine wave & thus has a maximum slew rate & frequency, in a digital cable we want to keep these nice straight edges of the square wave being sent down the line. Cable capacitance tends to round these nice straight edges off & this can introduce jitter, or if you like time induced distortion.

That's the first bit :eyebrows: Then you have the quality of the phono plugs to take into account. Unfortunately when Sony & Philips came up with the S/PDIF interface they should have used only BNC connectors as these have a proper characteristic impedance of 50 or 75ohm. Digital cables (well single ended digital cables) have a characteristic impedance of 75ohm. Now while the frequencies going down it aren't too outlandish, it's those square waves again that push things up to stupid frequencies.

A phono plug has no characteristic impedance at all, so it's quite possible that there will be reflections (just as there are in radio) with a mismatched impedance. This will further screw up the timing of stuff & add to the jitter or time induced distortion :rolleyes:

Cables & what go down them are in no way as simple as what you might think :eyebrows:

[jon1]

I'd be interested as well.

However there are people who say all mains cables sound the same, all interconnects sound the same and that you shouldn't spent more that six bob a metre on speaker cable. I'm thick so don't expect an answer from me. All I know is Talking in Tongues by Talking Heads has never sounded so good.

If cable burn in exists then I can't wait for the improvement.

Also I'm using four mono amps to bi amp my Usher speakers. Apparently that's a waste of time as well.

Apologies if I've clouded the digital waters, I couldn't resist.

Harry





Harry if you ever what to listen to MG high end Oyaide digital cable 510..pm me;)


jon

[wee tee cee]

Harry if you ever what to listen to MG high end Oyaide digital cable 510..pm me;)


jon

John,
I run a trico/wtb I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the oyaide.
Regards Tony.

[jon1]

John,
I run a trico/wtb I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the oyaide.
Regards Tony.





Tony i have being through all marks cables except the trico..All i can say this is the best cable for clarity and detail i have had from mark..tony if you get a chance to try the oyaide 510 take it you will not be disappointed


jon

[Z-A]

Digital cables carry electrical pulses that are hopefully square waves. All cables suffer from capacitance from the centre conductor to the screen & the longer the cable is the more capacitance there will be.

While this capacitance will have next to zero effect on an audio signal which is a sine wave & thus has a maximum slew rate & frequency, in a digital cable we want to keep these nice straight edges of the square wave being sent down the line. Cable capacitance tends to round these nice straight edges off & this can introduce jitter, or if you like time induced distortion.

That's the first bit :eyebrows: Then you have the quality of the phono plugs to take into account. Unfortunately when Sony & Philips came up with the S/PDIF interface they should have used only BNC connectors as these have a proper characteristic impedance of 50 or 75ohm. Digital cables (well single ended digital cables) have a characteristic impedance of 75ohm. Now while the frequencies going down it aren't too outlandish, it's those square waves again that push things up to stupid frequencies.

A phono plug has no characteristic impedance at all, so it's quite possible that there will be reflections (just as there are in radio) with a mismatched impedance. This will further screw up the timing of stuff & add to the jitter or time induced distortion :rolleyes:

Cables & what go down them are in no way as simple as what you might think :eyebrows:

Well described Mark, digital is more complex than just bits..

[Reid Malenfant]

Well described Mark, digital is more complex than just bits..
Thanks Paul :) I did the best I could do under the circumstances... I reckon.

The circumstances being :drunk: :eyebrows:

Nothing new under the sun there then... Only in the evenings mind you :D

[goraman]

Does anyone have an explanation on how is it possible that two different brands of digital coax cables sound differently? I'm personally hearing huge differences between various brands, but am scratching my head as to what could contribute to these differences. It's digital, ain't it?

Timing reduced by jitter, a digital signal can only be affected by jitter in a coaxial cable and jitter changes timing very slightly but your brain will pick up on it.

Oops I should have read Marks more detailed explanation before posting.

[jon1]

Thanks Paul :) I did the best I could do under the circumstances... I reckon.

The circumstances being :drunk: :eyebrows:

Nothing new under the sun there then... Only in the evenings mind you :D





Nothing has change their mark:drunk::D



jon

[Reid Malenfant]

:lol: Unfortunately not as of yet no...

[jon1]

:lol: Unfortunately not as of yet no...





Keep up the good work it is a dirty job mark..but just hang in there:D



jon

[Yomanze]

Another reason that digital cables sound different are signal reflections across the SPDIF interface, which cause mirrored images to 'bounce' back and forth along the cable & can make DACs think that timing bits are arriving at different times. SPDIF cables should really be minimum 1.5m in length and preferably 5m long to minimise the negative effects of signal reflections.

If you want the ultimate SPDIF then you need 75ohm BNC sockets and plugs. This is because as it is physically impossible for RCA plugs to provide a true 75ohm impedance, which means reflections.

[Reffc]

Just my tuppenceworth, but my own opinion is that many differences between digital cables are NOT the result of reflections and jitter in the plugs. Many RCA's are said to be 50 Ohm, but in truth are between 37 and 50 Ohms. In the scheme of things, a slight deviation over a cm or so will have little if ANY bearing on jitter or reflections. Why? because the buffers and clocks in the DAC are dealing with bits of data, and for every "bit" from the transport, there are 8 other identical bits (loads of redundancy) so that the converted signal from the DAC is almost a perfectly reconstituted sine wave.

As Mark has already pointed out, capacitance can cause problems, and wtih analogue this can be in two areas: pase shift and (with a low receiving amp impedance) HF roll off. The phase differences in most signal cables are within 1 Radian and therefore only affect the harmonic series high up in the register with almost inaudible roll off or timing changes, all of which pale into insignificance with the phase shifts subsequently produced by your loudspeaker/room interaction so its never worth losing sleep over.

For digital signal transfer, cable impedance is critical as the cable constitutes the majority of the signal path. Cheap often poorly made cables (mostly from China but not exclusively so) may not have the tolerances between signal and shield (spacing) to guarantee exactly 75 Ohms. A half of a millimetre out of tolerance will throw the impedance off so that much of the redundancy is used up and the DAC then may have to interpolate missing data gaps. This is how it works. The 1.5m minimum does not apply to digital signals and is something of an urban myth. You can make them any length providing the cable is good quality and correctly specified. Increases in length capacitance do not have the same effect on HF roll off as it is NOT and analogue signal. Many non-hifi digital transfer 75Ohm cables in industry can be many 10s or even 100's of metres in length. the longer they are, the more critical the cable quality becomes because of the reasons already alluded to.