Do I need an expensive digital cable?

Which dealer do you suggest whom you know will take back a cable? I deal a lot with Music Direct. Maybe they will? On paper, technically, there is a good argument that a cheap cable will work as well as an expensive one since the signal will be clocked after it is received by the streamer.

This is honestly getting more than a little frustrating.  I gave you at least three very reputable sellers that offer free trials — did you not absorb that?  Next, if digital cables don’t make a difference in your case then why did you hear clear differences between the crap cables you already tried?  Pretty much proves the point right there.  Last, you’ve received virtually unanimous responses from people here that digital cables make a significant difference, including many long-time members here with decades of hard-won experience that you just seem hell bent on ignoring.  There are several “experts” here from the computer hardware/software industry who just refuse to believe digital cables make a difference and won’t even try a better cable, but you seem to at least be willing to use your ears so again I’d highly recommend you do so and take advantage of one of the several sellers out there I and others mentioned and try a cable in the $200 range.  You’ve got next to nothing to lose and a lot to gain, so why the hell not?  Do whatever you will.  Peace out. 

@audio-b-dog sounds like a plan. but…Music Direct has nothing good in that price range - the lower priced AudioQuest is junk and it’s made in China.

one of the best digital cables with return policy under $300 is DH Labs D750. Upsvale Audio has it. And you can buy it directly from DH Labs. For excellent baseline cables DH Labs, in general, is hard to beat. 

I used the D750 in my system on Aurender N200 streamer and Audiolab cd transport and it was very good.
 

I also have BlueJeans coax that a lot of people like and recommend. I think it’s junk as it sounds horrible. I am expecting your $14 cable to be in that same ballpark. There are no miracles. If the objective is to use a proper digital cable and save as much money in the process as you can, then the $14 cable on your $4,000 streamer/dac will work just fine(hopefully). If your goal is to improve your listening experience you’ll need to go up to a good cable that costs at least several hundred. 

@soix 

Sorry to get you so pissed off and frustrated, brother. In fact, if you look at all the answers, nobody has said that they have ever used a transport into an asynchronous DAC. People have told me that my DAC is not fully asynchronous, and Moon said it would reclock the signal no matter what input I used. Look at the answers, my friend. Everybody says that more expensive digital cables sound better, and I believe that. But nobody has said that they had experience running a digital signal into an asynchronous DAC. I'm going to try it and let you know what I hear. Some people in this forum are open minded enough to be interested in hearing the result, because it's something they've accepted that they don't know about. 

I am not a person who accepts things on authority. I have always been like this. I have to question with my own mind and my own mind must be satisfied that I've covered all the permutations. In this case, my mind tells me that nobody has answered my specific situation. I'm sure people have dropped off because they don't care. But now that I've gone this far in the experiment, I'd like to finish and report my results. 

As far as you giving me three options for companies who take returns on cables, I was really asking in a less direct way if you've ever dealt with any of these companies. Because companies say they'll take things back and then it's not so easy when you actually try to return something. No worries. I'll suss this out on my own.

@audio-b-dog I did not list companies I’ve not dealt with. I think you’re a little grumpy tonight. Chill out. 

@audphile1 

Sorry about the grumpiness. I'm grumpy a lot. I'd say it has to do with age, and it does, but I've been accused all my life of being a bit cantankerouus (sp?) 

Okay, so I will try the $14 digital coax when it comes in a few days to see if it sounds any better. I'm listening to the RCA interconnect and it sounds really good. In theory, a highly jittered signal should be straightened out at the Moon's DAC. After I test the $14 cable I will order the D750 from DH Labs and see how it sounds. 

It does strike me that a 44.1 kHz signal out of the transport sounds better than a 44.1 kHz signal from my streamer. Obviously, when the sampling goes up the sound gets better. Although I can play SACD and Audio DVD on my McCornack multi-disk player, the Moon 280D will only receive the 44.1 signal. I play the SACDs and DVD audios through the McCormack's DAC. Which really isn't that bad. When I listen carefully, I can hear that the Moon's DAC is better on Redbook CDs. But I do have to listen carefully.

Okay. More on the experiment later.