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The best digital IC, period.

I've spent a great deal of time, too much really, to find the best IC between my transport to my DAC. After listening to six cables from some big names and big $$ as well as some not so well names for small $$. The winner came out to be a HAVE/CANARE $25 IC. With this cable there is no eye candy at all, ZED, but it's combination of GEPCO International, VSD2001 high definition 75ohm serial series digital coax, and CANARE true 75ohm RCA terminations, simply killed all of the esoteric cables with a few others coming in very very close, but the HAVE/CANARE $25, 3' was just beyond belief. Now I know that people feel strongly to use at least 1.5M in length for a DIC, but with this company I tried cables at length of 12" to 1.5M, i tried them all and the best of the buch was their standard 3' cable, defying the math. Hey, for 25$?
rpg
rpg OP
126 posts
 
Ozzy, let us know what you think after a listen. My 6' pair that I tried sounded dark and a little slow compared to my 3' cable, but the math suggests 1.5M minimum, so it will be very interesting to hear back from you! Happy listening!
Rpg
ozzy's avatar
ozzy
7,206 posts
 
Rpg, Well I recieved the 6 footers today.
Cold and out of the bag and straight into my Squeeze Box Touch... it doesn't sound too bad. In fact is sounds very good. Not dark or slow. Very lively sounding with good soundstaging and frequency extremes. Really, everything I want in a digital cable.
Comparing it to the Morrow D4 with silver Eichman RCA's it is really quite close. It seems to have a sharper leading edge but perhaps more playing time will smooth that out. But right now, it seems like quite a bargain.

My Morrow Dig4 is better in my system than the Kimber Illuminati D-60 was so if this cable can play with those, save your money and buy the HaveFlex Dig SPDIF.
rpg OP
126 posts
 
Ozzy, I'm glad your pleased. I think the HAVE/Canare option is a great place for people to start especially in the dark waters of IC's. I believe there indeed may be other cables out there that may sound better in their system than the HaveFlex, but I think the improvement might only be slight and you might get sucked into cables nearing the price of your equipment, I tell you, this cable business seems to be quite the racket with a lot of players making big claims. Yes, give your cable some time to break in, a couple of weeks I found and that bit of sharpness you detected will smooth over just a bit with no loss of resolution or extension. Enjoy, and forget that just because the cable is inexpensive does not mean it can't be a world class performer in many peoples systems, with the money you potentially may have saved, you can purchase a lot of music, and is that not what it's really all about?
Rpg
sabai
2,027 posts
 
Musicxyz, I noticed HiDiamond does not have an AES/EBU digital cable. Are you using their digital cable? If so, how does it sound?
tmsorosk
1,013 posts
 
A friend brought over a MIT digital balanced cable a while back, $3500. The best I've heard but just a bit pricy for me. Back to my cheap $1000 beater cable.
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