Do I need an expensive digital cable?

emi and jitter can both cause harshness in the rendered audio signal -- in the treble and mids -- and give a sense of lack of focus, a loss of spatial cues, imaging specificity, and weak bass

regardless if a dac is asynchronous or not, the signal needs to get from a to b -- the clock signal is but a small subset of what is being relayed by the cable -- and a poor cable can certainly harm the signal and as a result, make the music sound worse, subtly or not so subtly

each system has different resolution, each listener has different hearing acuity... there is simply no shortcut to trying different cables and setups, to see if it makes a noticeable or meaningful difference in YOUR system

same thing with everything -- equipment, room setup, cables, front end digital isolation, linear power supplies, cartridge and tt setup, mechanical isolation, and so on and on

What is kind of funny, and shows my sound inclinations, I did not find the sound from the analogue 50 ohm cable unpleasant. Everything was inflated, including the soundstage and especially the bass. Part of it probably had to do with my expectations. Wow! I was listening to a free cable not designed to work digitally and the sound was big, big, big.

When I put the high-end digital cable on, everything came into focus. Oh yeah, I said to myself, that's what it's supposed to sound like. Tight and clean. Bass punchy rather than big. An overblown, wooly bass has long been my weakness. Anyway, that's why I said that I thought the 50 ohm audio cable sounded good. The better digital cable brought everything into focus. If you only have $14, however, the $14 cable will work. 

@audio-b-dog you don’t know you have an issue until it’s fixed. 
any basic digital cable will work if your objective is to get your system to make noise with minimal amount of money and effort. Shove it all into a corner stacked Connect it all with garbage cables and it will play music. But that’s not getting max potential squeezed from the premium components you paid for. No miracles. Even with fully asynchronous DAC. 

@audphile1 

I think good cables are one of those things most people do toward the end of setting up a system. It can vary wildly and probably nobody on this thread has purchased really high-end cables throughout their stereo. I will not play my CD player that much, so I would have been happy to get away without spending much on the cable. So, you and others convinced me to at least give it a try. I set my budget at $150 and bought a used cable. It sounds pretty good. I did see 1 meter digital cables for well over a thousand dollars, and I don't think anyone on this thread has spent over a thousand dollara on a meter of digital cable. Or maybe one person. But, anyway, I set a budget and found what I think is a decent cable. And I'm glad you talked me into buying it.

@audio-b-dog 👍

Well your ears work. That’s good news.
So now you need to bring your streaming up a notch. Tons of music to enjoy. Different sound than analog, yes, but gives you quality listening time with music you would otherwise wouldn’t have access to. Properly set up streaming offers excellent sound quality. Should be at least as good as your CD player and possibly even better. 
Ready to start your new thread?