Do I need an expensive digital cable?


I have been using a fairly inexpensive optical cable to connect my CD transport to my Moon 280D streamer. I was told that an SPDIFcoax cable would sound better. For an experiment I purchased an inexpensive Pangea coax cable. It didn't sound at all because its terminator ends did not fit snugly in my equipment. I consulted chatgbt who often gives me audio advice. It advised that for the short run of 1 meter, an RCA interconnect would work. It did. And sounded much better than the optical. Chatgbt said that RCA interconnect was good enough.

Now, there is a twist to this story that might make those doubters think twice. A digital cable carries packets of information that are rechecked to assure that the streamer is recieving correct information. There is the timing concern, though. But my Moon 280D has an asynchronous DAC with a clock as part of the DAC. Any information sent by my transport, whether it is clocked by the transport or not, will go through the Moon's asynchronous DAC's clock. So ;there shouldn't be a timing problem. Should there?

Can anyone make a case that I should buy a "better" coax cable?

audio-b-dog

@devinplombier 

Any digital device that does error correction must use buffers.  Buffers also allow smoothing between the chunks of data arriving, and the drip feed out of audio samples.

I was concentrating on the loss of complete data packets which buffering on its own cannot correct.

CDs had error detection and correction worked out in minute detail from the get go, and incidentally need a 2,000 character buffer as a minimum.

It is staggering how far backwards we have come since

For many years, I used a Canare 75 ohm digital interconnect.  Maybe 3 years ago, I upgraded to 1M Cardas Parsec.  The difference was amazing and much greater than expected.  Much more detail and more musically enjoyable.  
 

I also upgraded power cords for the transport and the DAC.  

Here is Simaudio's answer to my question about the Moon 280D's asynchronous DAC: Yes, that is correct. The 280D’s asynchronous DAC applies across all digital inputs, including optical and SPDIF. The DAC's clock takes precedence over the CD transport’s clock.