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Digital coax cable, real world experiences?

Yes I know ANOTHER cable thread....lol
Guess that is why it has its own complete section
My question regards a cable I have not really paid much attention to previously, the digital coax connection from my media server to my preamp.
I was using a very old generic connection that is at least 15 years old but acquired a pretty cheap tributaries digital coax cable and thought oh well lets change it.
I was shocked and stunned at just how much more detail was present and the depth and solidity of bass was near overwhelming, granting I was listening to some pretty bass intense material at the time but still!
Now do not get me wrong I was once one of the biggest cable naysayers you would find and still think the majority of me now hearing changes is the quality of the rest of my system as previous "lower fi" systems just did not truly reveal any note(pun intended) worthy changes.
So my question is if I heard a significant difference with a fairly inexpensive cable what may occur with really going up the food chain on a digital coax cable? Or was it more that my previous no name very old cable was just that ..very old and poor.
Thoughts and real world experiences on digital coax cables?

128x128uberwaltz
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shadorne
7,467 posts
 
@jea48

Yes clock jitter is inherent in cables. The discovery by Stereophile was perhaps surprising in its day but everyone understands it today. This is why you need good equipment that is totally immune to inherent clock jitter on ALL the cables if you are seeking accurate high fidelity.

The problem with switching cable direction or another cable is that the jitter is just different but STILL there. So you can get impressive improvements but never achieve 100% clean jitter free performance by swapping cables. The source of the problem is in the component or DAC and its inability to reject jitter effectively. Jitter immunity is a major design goal for some high fidelity manufacturers others ignore it.
itzhak1969
515 posts
 
There should be correlation between level of your system to the cable,you really can’t expect good results when using stock cheap cables on high end expensive system it will degrade the sound severely ,and on the contrary there is no poit to buy expensive cables with lousy system it will not improve a thing.
The best results achieved when I changed all my cables (interconnects, speaker cables & jumpets and digital ones)
to the same brand and same level which show that it is very important to have synergy between cables and to avoid mismatch between brands and level of cables.

And yes there is a risk if you buy good cable and one or more of  components in your system aren’t good enough the cable will reveal immediately this weakness and you will have no choice and start upgrading.

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shadorne
7,467 posts
 
@itzhak1969



Absolutely there is a correlation. However it is opposite of what you state. Well designed equipment should reject extraneous parasitic noise and minimize distortion from ordinary bits of wire. Badly designed and faulty equipment will always suffer terribly as whatever wire you use can’t ever eliminate all the problems with the design.
janehamble
123 posts
 
@shadorne Got it, must be my lousy Hegel DAC, Belles amplifier or Kudos speakers.  That would explain everything.  Thanks.
auxinput
2,920 posts
 

I have also experienced differences between digial COAX cables.  I will agree that the Blue Jeans / Beldon 1694A makes an excellent COAX cable --for the money-- (like janehamble said).  I'm sure there are better (based on other posting), but for $20-30 it is extremely difficult to beat.  It is a very natural sounding digital cable with extraordinary resolution.

Based on all my research, there are a few elements which dictate how good a digital able is:

- terminations: 75ohm.  The BNC connectors are superior, but most can only use RCA.  However, it's important to get as close to 75ohm terminations as possible. This includes how the cable/termination is shielded (COAX cable and termination plug).  It has an effect on signal reflections as well.

- length.  It is suggested 1.5 meters is the best/minimum length to reduce the effect of signal refection on the main digital signal.  I use 6 feet.

- composition.  This is one area where silver is superior to all others.  In my opinion, silver is sometimes beneficial in analog, but mostly I believe it is not a good thing.  However, in digital transmissions, you want a medium that is able to charge and discharge extremely fast.  This gives better accuracy on the timing and form of the digital square wave signals and also reduces the effect of signal reflections back to the source.

Janehamble has very good success with the Audioquest Carbon, which is silver-plated solid-core.  I have heard excellent results from DH Labs Silver Sonic D-750, which is also silver-plated solid core.  I suspect the Wire World cables, starting with Starlight 7 and above, may also perform very well.  The Wire geometry is "almost" solid-core in a sense that they have several solid-core wires side-by-side like a ribbon cable.  It's not quite true solid-core, but it's not as stranded bundle either (bad).

It's been on my list, but I would like to build the following cable sometime in the future:

- VH Labs Pulsar AG OCC Silver / airlock.  2 meters at $170 (with 15% discount for 2 meters).  24 awg solid core OCC silver with an extremely low dielectric airlock insulation (no absorption of high frequency energy!).  This is a coax design with silver-plated copper braid shield.

- DH Labs RCA-750 terminations $24 plus shipping from ebay.  This is the best digital termination I could find that is closest to the true 75 ohm design.  It requires soldering the wire to the center pin.  I believe this design is going to be superior to any other RCA connector (that are usually designed for analog audio purposes).

I think this cable would be highly superior to many other cables (even those significantly more expensive).  I'm not going to buy a $1,000 cable for comparison, but the theory makes sense to me.  For $200, it would be a heck of a cable.

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