nOOb question source > cabel? > DAC

People will likely have a wide variety of answers about what digital cable to use, so I will chime in with my favorites.

Bolder Cable - Wayne is fantastic to deal with, and makes a great product at a reasonable price.
Signal Cable - Frank is really good too, and is more affordable.
Blue Jeans Cable - most affordable of the 3, solid gear, and decent sound.

Mark

PS - I am assuming that you have either RCA or BNC connections on that DAC and transport, none of the above will work with USB, if that is the setup.

i am not an expert so if anyone wants to correct me, feel free to.

the way i understand it, both can use the same connectors but analog convey an analog waveform signal. an analog signal is like what you hear. they are the pictures you see of wavy lines. digital, on the other hand has a digital signal. lots and lots of 0s and 1s travel through the cable to the DAC or whatever.

digital cables are considered to be superior to analog cables. an analog cable CAN be used for a digital application, but it is unwise. employing a digital cable for an analog application is perfectly fine.

check out http://www.bluejeanscable.com/articl...italanalog.htm

I also have a Piccolo DAC. Mine has a mini Toslink digital optical jack for its input and a mini stereo jack for its analog audio output. I've read that AOS is going to be building Piccolo's with coaxial digital jacks for its input and an RCA pair of jacks for its stereo analog audio output. I have a couple of questions for you about your Piccolo before recommending cables:
1) Are you taking digital output from your sound card and inputting that into your Piccolo, or are you taking the analog audio output of your DAC and inputting that into your soundcard? From your post I couldn't tell in what sense you are trying to connect the sound card and the DAC.
2) Describing the connectors on DAC and soundcard as "mini connectors" is not enough information. Are they mini Toslink optical jacks, or mini stereo analog audio jacks, or RCA digital coaxial jacks, etc? The more descriptive you are, the more we can help you.

For Optical digital cables, I highly recommend Sonicwave Glass Toslink cables, which I buy at: http://www.av-cables.net/digitalaudi...o-toslink.html ($35 for 1m, $45 for 2m, $51 for 3m). You can also get Toslink mini adapters on the same site for adapting the Toslink cable ends to mini Toslink jacks, such as I have on my Piccolo.

For Coaxial digital cables, I've tried and am very happy with, the Dayton Coaxial Digital Cable available at www.partsexpress.com ($7.70 3ft, $8.80 6ft, $11.70 12ft).

For analog audio cables, I'm very happy with the CPU Series cables at www.headphile.com ( $40 for 1m Copper, $50 for 1m Silver )

When you answer the questions above, we can let you know more specifically about the cables and adapters you'll need.

Everyone else seems to be delivering good answers for you, especially the detail in the last one, around connection types etc.

I guess another difference between analog and digital cables would center around resistance - a good digital cable for coax outputs is 75ohm all the way end to end - this is not easy to do with all RCA, so many times BNC are used.

BTW, Bolder Cables is having a sale of some of their trial cables over on AudioCircles, you might want to check that out, for a great deal on some great cables.

I just picked up another Bolder 0.5m RCA to RCA to go from my transport to Monarchy DIP.

Mark

Thanks for the info. To connect the soundcard's digital optical output to the DAC's digital optical input, you'll need a Toslink cable with mini-Toslink connectors on the ends. I highly recommend the Sonicware Glass Toslink cable, which only comes with full (not mini) connectors on the ends, in which case you'll need a mini-Toslink adapter for each end of the cable. There are other Toslink cables (not Sonicwave Glass) that come with mini-Toslink connectors already on the ends. I've done an experiment with my system in which I have used a Sonicwave Glass Toslink cable vs a much cheaper Toslink cable and I heard a significant degradation of sound quality with the cheaper cable. So I recommend the Sonicware Glass Toslink cable with the mini-Toslink adapters. In my post above, I've given my favorite vendor for the cable and adapter.

For the RCA-RCA analog audio cable, I recommend the cables at Headphile, as well as the amazing customer service that I have received from Larry there. In the choice of Copper vs Silver, here's what to keep in mind: if you already like the sound going into the cable, Silver will more transparently and with faster response transmit that sound to the amp. If you want to warm up the sound a little or enhance its soundstaging, Copper is a better choice.

Kurt, BNC is another connector for transmitting digital. In the pic below, you can see the round, metal "thing" above the black digital cable, that is a BNC male connector - the female end is the knurled metal thing that sort of slides around it, and "clicks" into place. Awful description, but if you google Canare BNC, you will find many pics that show the female end. My Bolder modded ART DIO came with BNC digital input, so I have been using that since.



The Monarchy DIP Superdrive also has a BNC output, SAID to be the optimal way to drive long digital cables jitter free, but that could clearly be marketing chatter. Am I satisfied with this item? Absolutely. It sits between my Nakamichi cd player (transport now) and ART DAC, and I believe a sound improvement has been yielded, but using it involves multiple digital cables, so it is nearly impossible to swap out fast enough to do a back to back testing with vs without it. I bought it used for US$95, so it was well worth that to me, even with the added cost of a second digital cable from Bolder Cables.

The DIP also allows me to use transports with only optical output, as it accepts that, and outputs either RCA or BNC styles. Versatile little tool that I picked up affordably used, like all of my front end - mostly from Iron_Dreamer and Strohmie here, or over at Audio Circles.

Here's the processing portion of my front end, isolated on my rack.



Mark