Best digital cable to audition?

Here are two excellent cables at opposite ends of the spectrum. I own both.

Blue Jeans Digital cable $13.50
Blue Jeans

Purist Audio Digital Dominus $1520.00
Purist

kana813, between the Sony and Scott Nixon tube DAC and between the Sony and DTS decoder before going into my Aesthetix.

Albert,

I'm curious to know how the two cables you mention compare to each other. What are their strengths and weaknesses?

Ketchup, I am using the Blue Jeans between my Sony 9000es and the Dolby DTS converter and frankly cannot hear any difference between it and the Purist on movies.

This of course is not a definitive test as my surround sound system is hardly state of the art. I am expecting the latest version tube DAC from Scott Nixon tomorrow and will give both cables a try with music.

Readster,

My understanding is a digital cables impedance, inductance, total length, internal reflectance and quality of terminations all play a role in its ability to preserve data.

Lots of discussion here at Audiogon on the subject, including the concept of maintaining 75 ohms as that is supposed to be the standard.

Then there is the issue of whether the DAC and transport are TRUE 75 ohm and would benefit from that exact termination.

Connectors play a role, with BNC type claiming to be "the" 75 ohm standard. In response, Canare built an RCA version that is reported to be just as accurate.

So as usual, the answer is not easy and why many of us choose to audition various cable to determine what works.

Sorry to be so slow in responding, the Scott Nixon DAC is a substantial improvement over the stock Sony 9000es, which probably comes as no surprise to anyone here.

The Scott Nixon may require additional break in as it seems to improve with each additional hour. I suspect changes are due to the outboard (toroidal) power supply and internal caps but perhaps the DAC chip as well. The tube supplied with the Nixon is basic and I have yet to try a NOS in it's place to see what that does.

Right now it's running with the cheap Blue Jeans digital cable from the Sony and Purist Venustas (Nixon analog outs) to my Aesthetix Callisto.

Very nice digital, particularly considering it's $575.00 price tag. It performs as well as some $10K players I've had in my system, so I will probably keep it.

I will try a shoot out between the Blue Jeans digital and Purist digital in the next week or so, but I'm inclined to stay with the Blue Jeans if for no other reason than matching investment with the rest of my digital.

If I could justify an Audio Note or other cool DAC, that would be a different matter.