I think my streaming is decent enough. I heard a new Linn streamer that is three times as much and sounds better. I know that streaming can be better, but a better streamer is not in my budget. Partly because i think my analogue system is close to the best out there, even though I don'e have a $100,000 turntable and $50,000 phono preamp. I think that I've hit the point of diminishing returns. So, I play records a lot.
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?
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@audio-b-dog I wasn’t suggesting a new streamer. I think there might be more potential to uncover with your Moon. |
I don't think the Moon needs better cables. The dealer who sold it to me made sure I bought good XLR cables. I think the Moon sounds very good. I will test out the CD player against 44.1 kHz streamed files to see which sounds better. I have read audio threads in which people have said that CDs sound better than 44.1 kHz files. There is no doubt that any digital files with higher resolution sound better than CDs. I have a few new threads in mind, but I need to find the time and energy. |
By pure coincidence I came across this article today in HiFi+: Reiki Audio JundoStream Reference: A Game Changer - hi-fi+. The digital cable in question is an Ethernet cable with four teased-out twisted pairs and an eyewatering price tag of US$4,350 per metre. Naturally the reviewer heaped praise on it but then came this paragraph which is based on the proposition that local storage (especially CD or SACD) is inherently better than streaming. This megabuck cable only narrows the gap!
I’ll postulate why this is so. Ethernet on its own is not an error-free transmission medium. It needs a higher-level protocol like TCP/IP to deliver error-free digital bits. TCP/IP has to run software in the receiving device, which hand-shakes with the sending device. Many streamers have this software embedded in a specialist app(lication) like Qobuz which means bits streams can be error-corrected as far as the streamer. When you need to connect a streamer to a DAC over say Ethernet, that connections has to run TCP/IP (or similar) at both ends to ensure error-corrected transmission. My guess is that streamers and DACS do not use TCP/IP for the final leg, so the digital stream can become corrupted. It is worse with I2S as there is no error detection or recovery at all. |
I assumed that the network packets were error corrected. But i haven't really looked into it. The dealer who sold me the streamer said that he had stored his CDs on a hard drive but streamed files from Qobuz sound just as good. He doesn't bother with his stored files. Anyway, over the next several weeks I will be able to evaluate Qobuz files against my CDs. Tomorrow, however, I will listen to a new (to me) mono vinyl album of Furtwangler conducting Beethoven's Ninth at Bayreuth. |
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