Difference in sound between optical cables?!

[TheSloth]

There are so many optical cables on the market, each one claiming to somehow have greatly superior performance to the next. I'm trying to get my head round what technically could make an optical cable superior, and am at a bit of a loss. I am using a cheapo monster cable to connect my Airport Express to my Headroom Desktop, and there are obviously no errors in the form of cracks or pops, so what improvement could there be from a 'better' cable?

Technical thoughts appreciated!

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheSloth There are so many optical cables on the market, each one claiming to somehow have greatly superior performance to the next. I'm trying to get my head round what technically could make an optical cable superior, and am at a bit of a loss. I am using a cheapo monster cable to connect my Airport Express to my Headroom Desktop, and there are obviously no errors in the form of cracks or pops, so what improvement could there be from a 'better' cable? Technical thoughts appreciated!

There's lots of useful info in this thread

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/cab...es/112116.html

Couple of others that many people love include Van den Hul Optocoupler toslink and Nordost White Lightning.

 

[labrat]

Deleted.

 

[Nomad]

Agree.
Buy any normal, cable. If it is not damaged, it will be good enough. That's the great thing about digital transmission.

Save on your digital cables and then spend it on your analog ones.

 

[gort]

Average computer newbie here (well a mac

), but doesn't PC systems resend packets when it is lost or corrupted during transmission while there isn't any retransmission for audio equipment?

 

[labrat]

Deleted.

 

[Solude]

Long and short of it is buy glass. WireWorld SuperNova, Van den Hul Optocoupler, Nordost White Light Glass, eBay/AudioGon Toslink etc.

FatWyre.com is running a special on SuperNova 2M for $75 instead of $150. The VDH has better connectors but costs more and takes 4-6 weeks to get and the Nordost is quite costly at $215 for 1.5M. The AudioGon one is quite good and only $20 for 2M. No bragging rights on that one though

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

Originally Posted by labrat Cracks or pops would be the result of errors in your computer system, or in your transmitter/receiver in either end of the fiber-cable. The cable itself is only transmitting 0's and 1's in a sequence, and unless it is nearly broken or in some ways not transmitting signals at all, you would not get any audible detoriated sound. Jitter is a very minor problem, even if portrayed here sometimes as a big, general problem. So I do not believe a digital cable to be able to influence the sound in a system at all. I work with systems transporting digital information over 800 km's of fiber-cable, without any amplification or error-correction in-between, in the Giga-band frequencies, and any loss here would mean a big problem. And there is not. So using a cable between a source and a DAC, a fiber of about 1 meter of lenght, the fiber-cable is your least worry when talking sound-quality! Get a cable with a good jacket/sleeve, not too stiff so it can be moved without too much problems. With good connectors, to avoid the cable from popping out of your connectors.

As much as I wish digital cables didn't sound so different, they do. In fact, digital cables sound as different from each other as analogue interconnects, if not more.

All you have to do is set up a revealing system with transport and DAC supporting at least 2 separate identical digital connectors and do extensive A-B comparisons between 2 digital cables. You'll see the sound is all over the map, even if the DAC is marketed as having 100% jitter rejection or double super duper PLL circuits, etc.

 

[TheSloth]

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-3-ft-GLASS-TOS...QQcmdZViewItem

These seem to be very reasonable for glass cables. In any case, I need a mini - fullsize cable, and I can't find a glass cable in this configuration. Using an adapter seems to defeat the object of a good cable, doesn't it?

 

[Kurt]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon L As much as I wish digital cables didn't sound so different, they do.

The OP asks about optical cables and they differ not as much as electrical ones.

 

[patrox89]

perhaps the problem isnt so much the cable or the dac, but maybe more of a compatibility problem between them. maybe some cables have ends that work better with certain dacs. just a thought. clean glass is clean glass right?

 

[Solude]

Problem is most toslink is plastic not glass. Anyone who's seen plastic windows has seen just how 'clear' they are after a few years

 

[Win0ver]

Considering it IS possible to get a 0% packetloss connection to a remote location over THE INTERNET, don't you think you'd get no packetloss over a SINGLE one foot long cable from your source to your DAC?

Saying there's a difference in sound between digital (wait, we're even talking about OPTICAL!) cables doesn't make sense.

 

[pcolbeck]

People really belive that they can detect jitter induced by optical cables ! The speed of light in an optical cable is so fast that it would be impossible for the human ear to detect any slight variation. The transmitter on the other hand could induce jitter. This is a digital signal stream, each packet either gets there or it doesn't and what you get with a cable that's having problems is drop out not jitter.
Glass cables fine as you probably get less drop out but superfantastic expensive ones - absolute snakleoil. If it made any difference to the reliablity of the transmision then they would be used in my industry (PC networking) and they aren't. I can push gigabits of data through a cheap cable all day and not get any errors at all !

Pat

 

[Solude]

To be fair networking is single mode, out of order able with error checking. Toslink is multi mode, in order only with zero error checking. It's not just a get there or not, it has to be in order and on time.