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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
deep_333
2,420 posts
 

Get this audioquest cinnamon digital coax, it’s around a 100 bucks, all you ever needed. 99.5% of guys can’t reliably tell sht past that in 99.5% of rigs when the blindfold comes on....

https://www.audioadvisor.com/aa-aqcindc

 

Send the $14 one back. 

I think the above information from Simaudio suggests that the quality of the cable running from the CD transport should not matter at all. My $14 one (on the way) should work as well as a $4,000 one. Anyway, I will test it against the RCA analogue interconnect that does seem to work quite well.

 

kmramos
4 posts
 

I can recommend the fairly priced SPDIF cable from Cullen Cable. I’ve been using it for a few years from streamer to Pontus DAC and am very pleased.

audio-b-dog's avatar
audio-b-dog OP
777 posts
 

I am sure all the cables you are mentioning are excellent, including the DH Labs, which I looked at, but for 1 meter it was $280 plus tax, etc. Over my budget, especially since I do not know what will happen with this asynchronous DAC. 

 

 

 

 

 

knownothing
1,821 posts
 

@audio-b-dog 

”If there is no difference between the analogue cable and the top digital cable, then I would say that the asynchronous DAC is fully asynchronous, clocking all inputs, including SPDIF.”

If you do notice a difference in sound between the cables, that does not necessarily mean your DAC is not fully asynchronous.  It could just be that one of the cables is better at preventing outside electrical noise from being transferred to your DAC.  Nothing really at all to do with clocking, just not polluting the analog circuit of the DAC.

kn

deer_creek_audio's avatar
deer_creek_audio
107 posts
 

 

Discussions about digital transport and what effects it can have on audio performance span a wide range. These topics often include:

  1. Cable quality
  2. Clock source, synchronous vs. asynchronous
  3. Transport quality
  4. Network packet resends (TCP)
  5. EMI,shielding

All of these things contribute to the uncertainties associated with digital transmission.

Please consider what happens inside the end device, for instance a DAC.  Most modern high fidelity DSP processors or DACs have a receiver chip that takes care of the above issues rendering them inconsequential.

XMOS xCORE-200 series microcontrollers have configurable I/O ports that include hardware support for buffering incoming bit streams.

Input port processors serialize incoming data, buffer and fix it before going on the i2s bus. This way the data buffer handles incoming data streams without requiring immediate intervention from the processor for every single bit. In this way the potential errors mentioned above are eliminated and the data is applied jitter and error free onto the i2s bus before going to the DAC

A great example is the XMOS xCORE-200 which is used in many miniDSP products. 

 

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