Do I need an expensive digital cable?

@audio-b-dog 

This discussion brings me back to when I was selling computers at Hewlett Packard to the Navy and Air Force. I would ask a support person a question and she would go on a bit longer than I expected, or could explain to the customer.Support people wondered why sales people were so stupid and sales people wondered why we were needed to boil down explanations for the customer

I can relate to this!  As a techo, I cut my teeth on arguably the world’s first PC, the Olivetti 101. I slowly worked my way until I had the grand title of Principle Systems Engineer with Australia’s biggest company.

Then I moved to a computer company, where I was the support guy doing all the work in presentations while the sales guy got all the money.  So I swapped hats and became the sales guy.  Initially I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, but fortunately I was poached by another computer company.  Relatively quickly, people realised I was a sales guy that did know what he was talking about.  I got the best accounts!

The most help I got was another sales guy who lent me a book on negotiating, which emphasied that you had to know the other guy’s timeframe.

Timing, in sales at least, is everything.  Which is a segway to your question about timing in the digital playback world. Personally I think it is a bit of a furphy (Australian slang for an army water wagon round which tall stories were told) but I know I’ll be shouted down.

You can go out of your way to cause timing issues, for example by using I2S - see post above.  You can use streaming services where your packet timing is subject to the vagaries of the Internet.

But if your dac is close-coupled to an input buffer, I think there are better things to spend money on than expensive clocks.

Let the battle begin

@audio-b-dog 

you could pass along some real-world choices you have made

Apologies for not answering earlier. My music preferences are mainly classical and a bit of jazz.

My real-world choices for digital have been to use silver disks (CD, SACD, Pure Audio Blu-ray) as my primary digital source. As far as possible, I play multi-channel.  My connections from my silver disk players/transports are exclusively HDMI cables.  From each player/transport, one HDMI cable is dedicated to audio only, a second HDMI cable handles video.

When I buy an HDMI cable, it is at least from a brand I recognise and is labelled at least Premium High Speed HDMI Cable with Ethernet in accordance with the HDMI licence conditions.  This means that it has been independently tested to meet the specified performance of 18-Gbps, at the length supplied.

I only stream (usually from Presto Classical) to check out whether I like a performance (not for the sound quality).  I just use my phone and Bluetooth for convenience, although WiFi is an option.

I have tried to steam live concerts from the Berliner Philharmoniker’s Digital Concert Hall under an expensive subscription, but the Internet does not seem to like Australia  - our National Broadband Network, which was originally to be all-fibre, was messed up by politicians and typically includes some copper to the premises.

In my motorhome, there is a 4.1-channel domestic set-up including a universal disk transport, but no guarantee of terrestrial Internet access!  Satellite access is expensive, as things stand today.  The major Telco claims 97% coverage of the population but misses 97% of the land area 

@soix 

You may have missed the part where I tried a more expensive cable and said that it sounded a lot better. People's guesses as to wise were all over the place.

You may have missed the part where I tried a more expensive cable and said that it sounded a lot better. People's guesses as to wise were all over the place.

Think you’ve got me confused with someone else.  I’m glad you kept an open mind and reaped the benefits from doing so.  Goodonya!

@richardbrand +1 for Presto.  I could not see your virtual system?  You say you use HDMI connections everywhere, if you have a great DAC and your gear supports USB that might work better for your streaming - IIS over HDMI cables is sending the clock over the cable, your DAC's clocking is derived from the source component plus the possibility of noise and jitter.

Presto's material is very often better than CD, and also (when 96 kHz or higher) better than SACD;  SACD is about 24 bit 80 kHz equivalent. Presto has been my primary source for downloads, I live in rural VT, the coax feeding my house runs through the trees and so I lose the internet far too often.