What type of cable has the biggest impact on SQ?

[goraman]

I find coax to sound faster and more open than optical, but I have to admit my own prejudices of optical , I have herd it sound very good with all glass cable.
But I choose coax every time.

[Yomanze]

I've found that optical can cover up deficiencies elsewhere in the system, usually brightness or over-etched detail. Otherwise coax all the way.

Sent from my BLN-L21 using Tapatalk

Yep, intrinsic jitter, like wot TOSLINK modules has, can have a blurring or smoothing effect on the sound. Some may prefer it.

My favourite connection is BNC.

[Macca]

Yep, intrinsic jitter, like wot TOSLINK modules has, can have a blurring or smoothing effect on the sound. Some may prefer it.

My favourite connection is BNC.

I agree that for whatever reason optical seems to have a smoother sound than co-ax but I doubt it has anything to do with jitter. Audible jitter distortion sounds like tape flutter, it's a pretty obvious degradation.

[goraman]

Yep, if you want to hear jitter, put a tight bend in an optical cable, it sounds like a FM radio station at the point of loosing signal, fffft,fffft,fffft! It's a very fast fall out repeated rapidly. I once bent a cheap monster optical in half to see if it really mattered. IT DID,A LOT!

[Yomanze]

There is a difference between hearing clearly audible jitter distortion effects, and the more subtle ones. Sometimes when people upgrade their CDPs with new clocks they can find it a bit ‘sharp’ and ‘clinical’, preferring the previous higher jitter clock.

[goraman]

There is a difference between hearing clearly audible jitter distortion effects, and the more subtle ones. Sometimes when people upgrade their CDPs with new clocks they can find it a bit ‘sharp’ and ‘clinical’, preferring the previous higher jitter clock.

I can belive that, as good transports and CDP 's always boast low jitter numbers.
I have no idea at what point jitter becomes audiably detectable?
Can someone with more knolage in the wide world of digital enlighten me please?

[tlscapital]

Purely CABLE talking on my simple analogue phono set-up I would say it's logically where it passes first in the chain; the tonearm cables. Then IMHO it should be the speaker's cables. But all in between if there's more as well...

[Macca]

I can belive that, as good transports and CDP 's always boast low jitter numbers.
I have no idea at what point jitter becomes audiably detectable?
Can someone with more knolage in the wide world of digital enlighten me please?

I have a link to the research on my home pc, I'll stick it up when I get home (if I remember).
The short answer is you need a lot for it to be audible. No CD player will have audible jitter so whatever the reason(s) people hear differences after installing after market clocks in their players a reduction in audible jitter won't be one of them. The very best professional RTR machines will have jitter levels an order of magnitude above the most basic of cd players, and vinyl even more. But oddly it's only cd players where it is claimed to have any effect on the sound.

[anubisgrau]

too short one!

[Macca]

Here's the research:

http://www.ultrahighendreview.com/up..._on_Jitter.pdf