Forums - Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference

JOMAN

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Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference
05/05/24 at 20:23:52

I just had an interesting experience that I thought was worth sharing...

I signed up for Qobuz. Since my sound room is still in progress I started a playlist that I could take with me. To test it I hooked my iPhone 14 Pro Max to the car system, which actually is a pretty good system. SQ was thin and bass shy. Oh well, it's only for the car and only from the iPhone, so while not entirely pleased I wasn't about to pursue this any further.

Except, the USBC to Lightning cable that came with the iPhone was too long so I ordered a cheap, one foot cable from Amazon. Received two for $12.00 delivered. Tested it to make sure that it would do data transfer as advertised and... WTH!

Played the entire play list. Indeed the body/density had improved markedly and the bass was fuller. This was completely unexpected and a pleasant surprise. The cable is braided and on the packaging one of the statements says; "Special product materials support large-current input and output".

This is not the first time that I encountered an obvious difference between digital cables. If I dig into this a little deeper I'll just frustrate myself so, I'll gladly just settle for this unexpected end result.

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CAJames

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Re: Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference
Reply #1 - 05/05/24 at 21:28:00

Here's my thing (and full discloser, networking was my day job for many years).

People think loading a website and playing digital music are the same thing: that bits is bits. But clearly the are not. When you are doing something like loading a website both the input and the output are bits, and it this case bits really are bits. And if some of the bits get delayed or corrupted the computer is perfectly happy to wait until they are correct, because (mostly) a computer doesn't care about time.

But when you are playing digital music bits are really an analog representation of a square wave that is propagated through an imperfect medium. The "digital" part of digital music is there is a specific voltage that marks the transition between 0 and 1, but what that voltage looks like after it has been through your cables and across your connectors and interacted with all the electro-magnetic noise in your vicinity can be very different from the cartoons we've seen of bits when they tell us bits is bits. And when exactly that transition from 0 to 1 occurs determines what the output musical wave form looks like. Or put another way time matters critically to digital audio.

So if you stop thinking about digital music as bits and start thinking about it as an analog signal, just like the rest of your system, things start to make a lot more sense. At least to me, YMMV of course.

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Same Old DD

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Re: Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference
Reply #2 - 05/06/24 at 01:21:15

CAJames, that is one of the most layman friendly and succinct explanations I have ever read.
Old network guy or not you've offered lots for us to work with. Along with Joman's observations about how some of the simplest things make huge differences.

I learned long ago how better cabling can improve "things" up to certain points. Some easy understanding for me about plain digital signals came from just my simple movie rig where a standard HDMI compared to even a median Audio Quest upgrade made a world of difference, both vid and audio, from switching in one higher grade cable.

I can barely wait to get things back together in my system and upgrade soon my digital source. My digital cables are half decent now, but who knows how far I can continue to find improvements.

Thank you for takng the time to bring some of us simpheads into the fold with higher expectations and even more to work toward.

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JOMAN

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Re: Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference
Reply #3 - 05/06/24 at 16:11:23

What CAJames has explained is the conclusion that I have come to after working "digital" for some time. So much so that, for me, "digital" is no longer stigmatized with the negative stereotype of early digital. I find as much satisfaction from it as I did with my previous analogue set up which was no slouch even by today's standards.

The shocking part for me was the difference that a charging/data transfer cable made even with an iPhone in the car system! Totally unexpected. The reason for the purchase was not to improve SQ just to shorten the cable length.

This further goes to validate that cables, analogue, digital or ethernet make a difference.

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TexJ Verified Member Posts: 40	Re: Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference Reply #4 - 05/24/24 at 23:18:18 Digital signal is still an upward battle for me. 2 weeks ago I learned coaxial cables are better than optical for reasons I can't explain but CAJames probably can.
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CAJames

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Re: Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference
Reply #5 - 05/25/24 at 03:02:34

Quote:

osted by: TexJ Posted on: Today at 15:18:18

...2 weeks ago I learned coaxial cables are better than optical for reasons I can't explain...

Since you asked... if you are talking about connecting a source to a DAC it isn't the cable. Optical cables have staggeringly high bandwidth. What matters is the laser source, and to some extent the receiver in your DAC. Back in the early days of digital most lasers used for digital music were not great and most people agreed that coax S/PDIF was better than optical TOSLINK. Since the 80s though lasers have gotten a lot better. So what I can say with my current transport and DAC is there is very little difference between coax and optical, but AES/EBU is better than either. YMMV as always.

FWIW the same is true with data networks. Today we use the same fiber cables at 1000x higher speed than we did 30 years ago when they were installed. This is because of new/better lasers.

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[FOOBAR2000 | Jay's CDT2 MRK3] -> Denafrips Terminator 2 + Gaia
Sumiko Pearwood -> Mapleknoll Athena -> Luxman SUT -> Maple-tree Phono 3E
STR-1002 -> Woo WA22 -> 2x UFO25s, balanced monos
Omega SAM , Hifiman Arya, Audeze LCD-XC

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JOMAN

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Posts: 767

Re: Digital Cables, Is Three A Difference
Reply #6 - 05/26/24 at 00:41:18

Quote:

2 weeks ago I learned coaxial cables are better than optical for reasons I can't explain...

This has not been my experience. Not that CA James can't explain rather my experience does not validate the claim that optical cables are better than coaxial cables. The comments that CA makes regarding lasers I completely agree with.

I have both, optical and coax cables. Starting with the Lifatech Silflex glass cable and the QED Reference Optical Quartz cable. The QED is better than the Lifatech, no contest. Long story short the QED is an extremely good cable and did best one of my coax cables but not the Wave Storm Reference, not even close. Given the difference in price the Wave Storm reference should be better.

The above needs a little more context...

The QED is still in my system between the OPPO and DAC. It is a very, very good cable and for the price a bargain! It will likely remain, it's that good and it's a good match for the level of SQ the OPPO puts out. However when I get a dedicated CD transport of better SQ than the OPPO, it'll be the Wave Storm Reference.

So which cable is better? Optical or coax? IMO and experience, it depends on the component. Some components will not benefit by a cable like the Wave Storm Reference others will. The QED is more than enough for many components and may be all that one needs.

One final recommendation... if you buy a cable like the Wave Storm Reference you may want to be wearing Depends when you get the Visa bill 😬.

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