Jitter and 75ohm cable length


I have read a number of papers on how cable length plays a role in Jitter between transport and DAC. After all of the dust settled I arrived at no sound conclusion, on paper, so I decided to use the ears of my 17 year old budding Audiophile to settle this by LISTENING! My transport is a Wadia 171i (WAV/LossLess files)and my DAC is a Cambridge AZURE 840C. I had three cables in my test, my 1M Kimber D-60 illuminations, a 3' HAVE/Canare and a 6' HAVE/Canare. All three cables sounded good, but in the end the victory landed on the 3' HAVE/Canare by a fair margin followed by the Kimber and last the 6'HAVE/Canare. In my readings I came across a number of articles saying you should use at least 1.5M of cable to reduce reflections in the cable so as to not harm the clock signal, yet an RF engineer said this was a bunch of "Bunk" and 1M would be better, in fact he said the shorter the better. So, forgive my verbosity, what are your thoughts and experience in this area? My 3' $25 HAVE/Canare beat up my $390 Kimber, I believe due to proper honest 75ohm terminations vs standard RCA connectors, and as far as length goes, at least in my system, 3' was by far the best. Thanks!
Rpg
rpg

Showing 1 response by vhiner

The best 75ohm cable I've ever heard has been a Moray James digital cable and this designer swears by 1.5m length. It clearly beat my half meter Canare and Kimber Illuminati cables....in MY system. Here's the twist, the MJ cable was voiced with the same type of Meitner DAC I owned. I suspect part of the magic has to do with system synergy. However, I still use the Moray James cable for the streaming audio feed to my PS Audio Perfect Wave DAC. It has the best bass and soundstage I've heard and recently beat an XLR Harmonic Tech Platinum digital cable. Your ears will guide you to the right destination. I believe finding the right cable/link is key to good digital sound reproduction.