AES/EBU cable shootout

@ghdprentice When I ask this question to cable manufactures the good ones say we don't know but it does seem to sound better. The bad ones give me ridiculous notions of speed of the signal matching and power reservoir and keeping radio frequency interference out. 

I've was a professional sound mixer for 35 years and no one uses audiophile cables in a studio or while recording the very largest film productions. I wonder how the final product can be better (more fidelity) than the originally captured product? Perhaps an AI brain will fill in the gaps someday but not now.

From a professional perspective latency in digital circuits is by far more important than nano second timing differences created by cables. In modern systems used in professional recording you set latency based on buffer size. Last week we did sound and video in an arena with an all fiber network but because there were ancillary audio and video circuits in the sound mixer and the video switcher the signal to the video monitors in the sound room was about 2 frames out of sync, probably about 3 feet as far as the speed of sound. If you are speaking in a microphone and hearing that signal on headphones you will hear 3 milliseconds and up, it's difficult to speak or sing without being distracted by the timing error with only 3 mil. delay which is very low.

The circuit latency in digital systems is practically never talked about in audiophile stats, it is in the realm of 1/1000ths of seconds not 1/100,000 of seconds, milliseconds are very audible microseconds are not. Cables are the connectors between the digital circuits they are not the problem. "Don't kill the messenger" that's all cables are.

Analog systems have much more to do with cable gage and length.

@thyname To answer your question yes, bollocks everyone knows you can't have better sound quality than the original (I did recording for 35 years) audiophile cables especially are perhaps hundreds of times more expensive than professionals use in the studio at concerts and location recording. So yes there are elephants running around in the room and audiophiles are worried about mice. I assume that no one is making an elementary mistake like impedance mismatch in digital cables and not using to small of gage, dirty connectors or anything like that. 

There is no denying cables make a difference the difference's start from zero in a digital connection and only go down from there the cables can't make anything sound better. 

Speed of transmission is meaningless with the same type of cable (copper, silver etc.) if you are using some crazy conductor the speed of the signal can change drastically by changing the impedance but that is another subject. generally copper/ silver is a little slower than the speed of light producing nanoseconds of differences where latency in digital circuits are milliseconds 1 millisecond is about a foot at the speed of sound in air.

Also just for fun every recording has phase problems the 3 to 1 rule is the oldest in the book -triple the distance from the first mic to the next mic- even a single stereo mic over the conductors head has different kinds of phase problems like the diaphragm's being perhaps an inch apart or acoustic phase problems like reflections from the floor, walls or the music stand in front of the musician. These are real timing errors that actually make a measurable and audible difference, nanosecond timing errors because of the length of the silver cell in the cable are mice among elephants. Hope that's clear.

@steakster You say "cable-deniers" does that mean people who don't think cables will make a system sound better? I asked many cable manufactures at AXPONA what cables do for a sound system only 1 manufacture, Beldon, had an answer. Most of them said "I don't know but people like it". Question for you concerning digital signal processing, can you make the signal better than the original? Think about it for a second if you say no then you also can't make the signal better than the signal you get from the any source at any position on the signal path all the way to your speakers. As far as I know there is no AI algorithm that adds information to an audio signal. What do you say? 

@thyname I really don't mean to pick on audiophiles and someone pointed out to me lately that I should be kinder, I agreed and I'll try. It's just that this group is full of intelligent people who have the same hobby as I do so I want to add the the knowledge when I have expertise in some cases. I was the first person to record a fully digital signal path for movies and I spend a lot of time fixing the workflow of many studios while at the same time nearly getting fired numerous times because of all the confusion concerning digital signal path. I've been there and have the scares and the Oscar and Emmy winning shows to prove it.

@jeffstrick Cables can’t fix anything, although years ago when a singer was to bright we used an old brown Electro Voice cable that didn’t pass high end very well and it fixed the problem, a little EQ with mic cables. Again cables only degrade they start at zero if they are perfect, cables can only make things sound worse. I listened to cables worth 180k at AXPONA a few weeks ago and the speakers were disappointing even in a $1.3M setup.

@thyname Well argue your point then don't simply put me down, I don't care if it's technical or practical. The question is do cables make a sound system better. No one including the OP is saying that cables don't make a difference they must be up to zero to be perfect. No doubt cables make a difference but no one has ever shown they make a positive difference only a negative one, even getting rid of RF or other forms of over the air distortion still the cable does not add to fidelity ether analog or digital. I don't even think audiophile know what a "cable-denier" is. Perhaps it's more accurate to say "Im a cable cultist, come frolic with me".

@thyname Sorry you are making the wrong argument, you aren't keeping the signal the same as it is originally you are only at best keeping the signal the same at the level it enters your speakers there is a world of difference between original and the end of the line. You still never answered the question "do cables add any positive traces to the signal". Also you misunderstood my analogy between "Vaccine deniers" and "Cable deniers" an obviously derogatory term. Calling names is really the lowest form of debate, try harder.

Haven't you ever thought of the hundreds of feet of cable around the voice coils haven't you ever thought of the tracers on the PC board haven't you ever thought of the fuse haven't you ever thought of the crossover PC tracers (at speaker level), come on argue with me give me your technical reasons why an expensive piece of cable at the end of 1000 feet of electrical line is going to help with anything but 3 feet of RF filtering, you can do it.

So just think of this, everyone agrees the signal isn’t going to get any better because of cables. So if the original studio or location sound recording doesn’t use these uber expensive cables of any sort (AC, interconnects, speaker) doesn’t that mean you are wasting your money. Simple premise, where am I wrong? Again I’m not talking about simple cable mistakes like impedance mismatch or errors in gage or cheep cables not using adequate RF protection.

The OP was just a case of using a cable that was adequate for his system, just getting up to "0".

@thyname I understand, I love your audio system it seems you have some expensive cables, you must have some objective reason for buying them. Have a nice day.

@ghasley I hear you, no doubt that good people with great ears hear huge improvements with cables, I have drank the Kool Aid myself just in case I was wrong. Hey I have over 70 speakers in my house and 4 Dolby Atmos systems, 1 professional.

its really bad when the salesmen who distribute the cables can't tell you why they sound better. I was starting in the music studios when digital came out, they said the handshake between components was the key it was either a 1 or a 0 and there wouldn't be so much distortion that the numbers would get flipped apposed to analog where there was a variable handshake with an infinite opportunity to make errors. There are fancy ways components look at digital signals now but generally that's still the case and if the cable can pass a 1 or a 0 it doesn't matter haw much the cable costs. 

When the cable is a BNC the dielectric is important it can change the timing of the 1s and 0s, it turns out the timing/impedance of the information in the cable is the most important aspect of digital cables. The timing of the signal in the cable is always the same if exotic dielectrics are not used. The idea that high frequencies move at a significantly different speed around the outer edge of the cable is silly. As I was saying before the latency in any and every digital circuit makes much more difference than any cable skin effect, this is where the snake oil comes in. No one in professional audio cares about designer fluff fluff cables it simply never happens if there was a significant time difference in the high frequency recording engineers would have to deal with it and we don't.