Digital Cable : Copper, Solid Core, Unshielded


I find this recipe having the best of copper tonality and speed of silver. I am very rigid about using copper cables simply because I am tired of trying out Silver cables which sound dry to my ears. I do not intend to experiment more in that direction. Copper is good enough.

I am looking for a digital cable. I have recently realized that proper PRAT can make music extremely enjoyble and also that PRAT is one of the most neglected aspects among the things we consider important in our system.
Most of the times we ask for smooth natural tonality, extension, soundstaging, layering etc...it is rare that we see PRAT in the list and even if it is there, it is mostly down below. Unsurprisingly many systems lack PRAT (including mine). We can argue that we still enjoy our music well, but believe me, we do not know what we are missing till we hear it. Recently a friend of mine got his power cord over to my place. This friend is an out and out PRAT guy. Everything that he selects for his system has to have good PRAT factor as a first thing. I always knew this power cord would also have some of that factor...but the change was not subtle at all. Tonally my existing power cord was no less (in fact a tad better), imaging, staging everything was on par between these cords but the kind of musicality the extra pace and Rhythm brought in was amazing. Inserting my old cord made things pretty boring. I could not believe that the same trusted power cord which I was loving 30 minutes back is sounding boring to my ears now. My friend gave me another such example when he removed my Interconnect and placed in an Anti IC and there was a similar improvement (less pronounced than the power cord though). Forgive my rambling here. I wanted to make a point here. I think PRAT is one of the top most important things in Audio.

Having used different varieties of ICs in the recent past, I have realised that Unshielded cables in general have this property of presenting music as if it were flowing on a smooth and fast express highway without any restriction. There is a natural open-ness combined with Speed.
Combine this with solid core conductor and you can actually attain a very clean transparent sound which is liquid, fast, open and tonally natural.
This is not a formula that works with every such design. For me it did not work with Tara Labs RSC Master Gen.
But if done well, this looks like a very good recipe.

I am trying to figure if you guys can recommend digital cables based on this kind of design. "Unshielded Solid Core Copper".
I have one in mind, Digital Anti IC.
pani

Showing 1 response by almarg

I would caution against extrapolating from your experiences with interconnects that carry analog signals to the transmission of digital signals. The principles and effects that are involved are completely different, and I don't think there is any reason to expect that the behavior of different cable configurations that you observed with analog signals will carry over to digital cables.

Regards,
-- Al