[bootman]

The title says it all.

I'm looking for some good digital cables and would like to hear from fellow head-fiers as to what cables they had success with.
(I'm only interested in coax digital cables not toslink.)

Thanks!

 

[bootman]

Has anyone tried these?

The bolder digital cable.

 

[chych]

I've heard good things about the bolders, go for them!

 

[KR...]

How much are those bolder digital cables?

Of course, you can always go all out and get these :

Transparent Cable's

Reference 75 Ohm Digital Link
The large, polished OFHC center conductor is surrounded by proprietary air/spiral teflon insulation to reduce noise and increase propagation speed. Superior shielding results in a cable that is free from interference. This hefty cable may be precision terminated with custom designed coaxial RCAs or instrument grade BNCs.

 

[AC1]

Lots of people go for the Acoustic Zen Silver Photon, fairly revealing, a very neutral cable for the price... A slightly warmer cable would be the Harmonic Tech copper... Interestingly, the dealer I bought my cable from did not like the Harmonic Tech silvers (which are more expensive to boot) over the Photons since they could be too cold in some systems.

 

[aos]

Digital cables have much less influence on sound than interconnects. In fact, I have yet to hear ANY difference. For example, this weekend I made my own digital cable and compared it to $40 Ultralink cable and heard no difference whatsoever.

As long as the cable is shielded from EMI, has 75 Ohm impedance and decent gold-plated jacks, it should be fine.

 

[Hirsch]

aos,

I used to think that. I was using the Audioquest Digital II, but really couldn't hear much difference over less expensive digital cables. Then, pretty much on a lark, I tried the Elco DC-32, which was a discontinued interconnect being cleared out on Audiogon for $45. It's a solid silver conductor in a teflon/air sheath. The difference was amazing. The Audioquests went back to the dealer, and I wound up buying half a dozen of the Elco's. I'm still wondering if I should have bought more, just to have a few backups. Alas, I think the last of them are gone

 

[chych]

aos, I'm going to have to agree with you. I am extremely hard pressed in finding differences in digital cables... heck I stuck a stupid piece of plain old wire between my DAC and CDP and am still very hard pressed in finding differences... between ANY of my cables. If it works for you, then fine, but it certainly isn't working for me.

I say go with analog ICs and totally skip the digital ones...

 

[Hirsch]

KR,

You think Transparent might take $75 for them????

 

[aos]

Whether digital cable would make a difference depends on the quality of jitter rejection in the DAC and the amount of EMI around the cable. Possibly more expensive cables have better shielding - center conductor, shield, and another shield or two around it all. That would isolate the outer conductor from doing the double-duty of shielding from EMI and conducting, and make ground less noisy. Mabye that'd make a difference. Just theorizing... Mind you, my DAC has proper isolation transformer plus 75 Ohm termination...

 

[KR...]

Quote:

You think Transparent might take $75 for them????

Hell no

 

[dhwilkin]

Digital cables do make a difference in my experience. I currently have a Belden digital cable, favored over another DIY cable of a type I can't remember right now. More or less the same price range, though. The Belden cable was somewhat less resolving, but the other cable just sounded really distant and boring. I'm almost certain the fact that my interconnects are Belden had something to do w/ it. Actually, what I'm trying to get at is I believe using the same type of cables for digital and analog will result in much greater synergy than random pairings.

 

[morphsci]

An important consideration in digital coax cables is the quality of the plugs. Many RCA plugs do not present a 75 Ohm impedance. Many (including myself

) prefer the Canare true 75 Ohm connectors for their very close manufacturing tolerances in regards to impedance.

 

[SumB]

The DH Labs D-75 is the most neutral sub $100 cable I've tried.

 

[chych]

Just a FYI, from what I hear, RCAs cannot even provide a true 75 ohm link by design... Thats why BNC exists... ideal thing to do is to move to all BNC which is true 75 ohm.

Though some equipment by design are not 75 ohm; take the ART DI/O for example, it has 100 ohm digital inputs.