USB to SPDIF converters shoot-out : EMU 0404 USB vs. Musiland Monitor 01 USD vs. Teralink-x vs.... - Page 12  

I have the Belden 1694A Digital Audio Cable (BNC) and I found that it performs very good in comparison to similarly priced digital cables (budget cables such as Canare and Belkin Silver Series). However it doesn't reach the performance of a high performance digital cable such as the Stereovox XV2 (in my setup).

By the way, it just happened that I read an article where the reviewer tried a few spdif cables (review here). I copied below an extract from the review.

"For digital S/PDIF coax cables, well where to start? I have the following to try and naturally they all sound different in some way or another (again more on this later): PAD Aqueous ($650), Blue Jean (Belden 1694A - $15), Moon Audio Black Dragon ($170), Canare Digiflex Gold 2 ($40), and a Signal Cable (also I believe based on the Belden 1694A - $30). All work fine and all will get you there in one way or another. The PAD is considerably more refined and dimensional, the Moon Audio is fast and clean, and the others fall into the "gets the job done with little to complain about" camp. For the money the Belden stuff is quite good. The Canare is somewhat muted and diffuse, lacking to a great degree, when compared against the others here, musical resolution. Odd as the Canare used to be an industry favorite. Well, time moves on… it ain't bad, just not as good as the others."

Spdif cable length

You can find here an interesting article about why sometimes a longer spdif cable can sound better than a short one. To sum up, longer cables can avoid reflection in certain situations (impedance mismatch, ...) but it depends on too many factors to predict in a reliable manner.

So, there is no way to know for sure how a given digital cable will interact with the rest of your equipement. by the way, I was wondering the same before getting the hiface unit, and I asked Marco from m2tech about which cable he recommends and he said that it was system dependant.

If price is not an issue, I guess you should get good results with any cable with lengths above 2m/6ft.
In my case, I have a 18ft. Belden cable but I bought a short 1 meter Stereovox bnc cable because of cost concerns : the 2m cable was almost double the price.

Hi erin,

Most of the usb cables I own are between 1.5m and 2m and yet I can hear differences between them, so I guess that what you heard is not only due to the difference in lenght but also to other factors (shielding, conductor material, dielectric, ...), in my opinion.

I tried many usb cables before buying the Wireworld Ultraviolet USB among which different versions of Belkin (Gold series, regular, ...), Monster Cable and Real Cable USB (a french brand). They all sounded different with strengths and weaknesses.
It was until I bought the Ultraviolet usb that I stopped looking for a new usb cable, its sound was cleaner, faster, more spacious and less "digital" than any other usb cable I had tried.

However, since I haven't compared the Wireworld ultraviolet usb cable to similarly priced or higher cables (Kimber, Locus Design, ...), I don't know if it is a great value cable (or not). All I can say is that the improvement it brought to my system was worth the asking price (£48). In fact, I spent even more than that trying different cheaper usb cables (monster, belkin gold, ...) which brought only sideway improvements (different sounding to each other but no clear winner).