Which budget digital cable ?

Haven't heard Joemazzaglia's digital cables but his analog ones certainly are, as Listener57 says, budget in price and elevated in performance.

I'm very happy with my expensive Atlas Opus and I would think the cheaper Atlas Compass worth a try. I have owned a VH Audio cryo Pulsar and thought that one very good indeed, with an amazing long breakin period.

Unless you are absolutely sure that your DAC maintains internal impedance at 75 ohms, get a cable that is 1.5m long. Often the difference in price over 1m is minimal. The extra length makes a huge difference in cleanness and coherence in most setups. This is because the extra half meter delays internal reflections just enough that they don't arrive at the DAC in time to cause jitter.

Almarg, I have posted on this simple measure a few times now because its benefits are great compared to the cost involved. Yours is the most useful and enlightened response I have yet read. Thanks in turn for it.

I first heard about the phenomenon in a post here by Empirical Audio's Steve Nugent (audioengr). On his Web site's first page he has a link to a technical paper of his which explains in detail ("Paper on S/PDIF cable length in PSOnline"). I had to try it myself, of course, so I made up two otherwise identical lengths of Apogee Wyde Eye. The listening tests I did with a friend were perfectly conclusive: the longer cable was better (with our gear) by a wide margin.

Certainly, most of what I have read stresses the
importance of jitter rejection/immunity at the DAC end, presumably becuase
changing interconnect cable lengths might work on some equipment but not
other

In S/PDIF, timing is set by the transport's clock, as you know. That means that
timing gets screwed up (i.e. jitter gets worse) if the timing information is not
received correctly by the DAC; errors are maintained through to conversion.
One way for the DAC to deal with this is to maintain a constant 75 ohms
impedance from its input. Read Steve Nugent's paper to find out at least one
reason why this doesn't always happen, though.

Furthermore, whether or not the DAC handles impedance in its own signal
path correctly, the RCA connector, when used, invariably offers a mismatch;
there is no such thing as a 75-ohm RCA connector.

These are two causes of jitter in setups with an external DAC and digital
interconnect. The timing adjustment offered by a 1.5m cable length
diminishes jitter from these causes. Almarg's limpid post makes it easy to
understand why.

Shadorne, you may have heard a lot about jitter rejection/immunity at the
DAC because of the weakness of the S/PDIF clocking system, which uses the
transport's clock, not the DAC's, to establish system timing. ( You can read
more about this weakness at the LessLoss site. ) Double-clocking DACS like
the Apogee Mini-DAC are one approach (in my view, quite successful) to
solving this problem. Another is slaving the transport to the DAC's clock, as
done by Linn (Karik/Numerik), Cambridge (DiscMagic/DACmagic) and
LessLoss. Also, do read Steve Nugent's paper for yet more.

No matter what the DAC's internal design, though, the presence of an RCA
connector suggests that a 1.5m cable may be optimal with that unit.