Do digital cables differ to analoge cables


Hi
just moving into the the relm of separate transport and dac, my question is are there any diferrance in the cable design of a normal rca or balance cable that we use for the analoge conection know, compare to a digital cable that you use from transport to dat, second question are you better of to use optic fibre compare to balance conection?
k_rose

Showing 1 response by kijanki

K_Rose

Digital cable has characteristic impedance of 75 Ohm for unbalanced and 110 Ohm for balanced cables. Proper impedance matching is important because digital signal of high slew rate reflects on impedance boundaries causing jitter (noise in time domain). Digital cable is also constructed differently: it uses cheap copper, often silver plated, since signal at high frequencies travel only on the surface (skin effect). Shield is grounded on both ends and used as a return/GND - not very good for analog.

You could use analog cable as digital if you don't hear the difference caused by impedance mismatch (short cable, low slew rate from CDP, jitter rejecting DAC). If you use digital cable the optimum might be 1.5m (reflections timing). Coax will give you better performance than Toslink (fiberoptics) unless you have ground loops that Tosling breaks (being optical).