Quote:
Originally Posted by dura  @slim.a thank you for your detailed answer, there are some valuable points in it.
I'm new to these digital interconnects, having had inegrated CDPs bfore I switched to the Squeezebox.
Very surprised there was an audible difference between digital interconnects, and the differences were what I would expect when going from copper to silver analogue IC's, coincidence? .gif "Confused Face(1)")
Strange...
Anyway, You make a valuable point about the digital-out quality of the Squeezebox and I feel the Digiflex (Canare cable indeed) indeed seems to add some warmth, pleasant but perhaps not truthful, no doubt in a more resolving system the Oyaide would fare better.
As it stands now, the Digiflex is the best match in my system, but after future improvements I'll start experimenting with the cables again. |
Your experiment with the Oyaide is very valuable as I haven't stressed enough (in the review) the importance of the transport. I have considered the transparency and revealing nature of the Oyaide as a good thing but it is a good thing only with nice sounding transports.
By the way, the same effect can be expected from high quality pure silver interconnect. While they can sound fantastic on good equipment, they can sound awful when matched with bad components.
In my reviews, I have always tried to make a distinction between equipment/cables that are transparent/revealing (which is a good thing) and equipment that overemphasize some parts of the sound (which a bad thing).
When you use components/cables that are transparent throughout the chain, you should get very extended and details highs (on instruments that carry a lot of upper harmonic content) and at the same time you should have less sibilance than falsly bright equipment which doesn't reach as far in the frequency extremes. If you read for example my
comparison between the copper based Equinox vs. the Artisan Silver Cable you will see that I have found the Artisan Silver Cable more extended on top and smoother at the same time. However, I noticed this quality only because both my DAC and my headphone amp use current amplification (Zero voltage feedback) which reduces the amount of perceived intermodulation and distortion (they have lower Transient Intermodulation Distortion or better time domain performance in other words).
Again when comparing both the voltage gain module (feedback) and the current gain module (zero feedback) on the audio-gd FUN, I was able to spot easily the subjective distortion in the module that used voltage feedback.
My guess is that pure silver cables are described as being bright because they only highlight some contents that were otherwise masked by the copper based cables.
However, in a high end and natural sounding system (low jitter, tubes and/or zero feedback, ...) the Silver based cables give a smoother, more detailed, and more lifelike representation in my opinion.
So of course, in your case, it makes totally sense to stick with the digiflex which gives you the best tonal balance. But if someone is trying to build a new front end, I think that it makes more sense to use a low jitter source (such as the hiface) + a highly resolving cable (such as the Oyaide) instead of using a jittery source and a warm sounding cable to cover the jitter (in my opinion of course).
