Do I need an expensive digital cable?

@audphile1 

The Moon 280D does have an ESS DAC, but I don't think of it as lean. I find it a bit on the tubey side. Although I did hear it streaming a bit lean on some Debussy piano music I listened to,

I think what makes the Moon 280D "punch above its weight" is that although it uses an early ESS chip, the analogue software is the same as high-end Moon streamers. Anyway, I'm quite satisfied with it, and I won't be buying anything better unless I get another large inheritance, like the one that enabled me to purchase the Sonus Faber speakers and Moon 280D, which was kind of an add on because I was only supposed to be buying speakers. 

I am listening to an old recording of Frinec Fricsay and the pianist Geza Anda play Brahms' Second Piano Concerto. It sounds great through the ESS DAC. Again, I think it's what happens after the DAC that makes the Moon 280D sound good. And whatever I own sounds better than anything else. Remember the song "Love the one you're with."

@erniesch 

Having studied about networks when I worked in the computer industry, I argued exactly what you're arguing about network packets being checked, so all network packets are the same no matter what cable you use. I also made the argument that my DAC was asynchronous and reclocked the signal. I argued that as long as I could hear the music, a 50 ohm interconnect would work as well as a 75 ohm digital cable. If the packets were getting through then they were being error correcxted.

To test my theory I bought a $14 digital cable and a $249 digital cable. The $249 digital cable won, at least by my ears. The interconnect caused bad jitter. The $14 cable was much closer to the $249 cable, but the $249 cable was the best.

Why? It has much better shielding and its wiring is more complex? I don't know. But I do know that my bias was for all the cables to sound the same. That would have been my bet based on the networking theory that I knew. Anyway, the $14 cable is available to anyone who wants it.

@audphile1 

With chip DACs your working within the limitations of the chip. There’s a reason why ESS based Bluesound is limited to DSD256

Not in the example i quoted.  The ESS chips handle DSD1024 natively, see ES9039Q2M Datasheet. The limitation is with the Bluesound designers.

I am particularly sensitive to DSD being down-sampled.  My Reavon universal disk player sounded excellent on any disk source except SACD.  It was obvious to me after a few seconds play.  I checked the data sheets of the Burr Brown dacs and they did not mention DSD.  I emailed Reavon and discovered they down-sampled DSD to CD quality.  The machine is just fine as a transport, outputting DSD over HDMI, but I wasted a grand on two useless dacs.

@richardbrand 

I'll have to admit that you'll have to explain Bluesound to me. I do know, though, that the ESS chip in my Moon 280D handles both DSD and MQA. i have spent a bit of time comparing the same album on Tidal and Qobuz. Tidal seems a bit more "musical," i.e. laid back and relaxed. Qobuz has a more discrete sound in which attacks are better emphasized. There are a lot of othe differences I won't go into here.

My point being that I can hear the difference between DSD and MQA through the Moon 280D. As for my transport, I play SACD and DVDA straight into my preamp, using the Burr Brown chip. I remember the review in which John Atkinson said he did not hear a great difference between the regular CD function and the hi rez function on the Burr Brown chip in the McCormack UDP-1. I think he was right, although I can hear a much higher quality on some hi rez disks.

@richardbrand 

My 4 door sedan is capable of reaching a speed of 155mph. But it will perform much worse than a new porsche 911 turbo S at that speed. And that’s why it’s capped at 130mph (not that I ever drive that fast in case we have some LEO reading this)
That type of limitation is what I was referring to. So the designers made a most likely the best choice within the given architecture/platform.