HDMI i2s Cable

I don't have any experience with i2s, but every other digital interface/cable that I have used still has problems with shorter cables.  This includes HDMI, S/PDIF, USB. 

Since i2s is just about the same as S/PDIF, but without the S/PDIF wrapper, it would be my opinion that shorter cables would still have problems. 

The problems with short cables has to do with the square waveform digital pulses being reflected at the receiver back down the cable to the source.  These reflections alter and distort the new pulses being generated at the source transport.  Since i2s is just another digital square waveform format, I would imagine that it's still affected by short cable problems.

There is a .5 meter Silver Starlight 7 available if one of you was interested in trying it:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/WireWorld-SSH7-0-5m-HDMI-cable-Free-Shipping-Working-Properly-d442/26478710...

But personally, I would pick a 1 meter Silver Starlight 5-2 instead.   The conductivity of the OCC copper is significantly better than other wires and I think it would negate that "minimum .5 meter" cable length for i2s purposes.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Wire-World-1M-Ssh5-2-1-0M-Silver-Starlight-Series5-2-Hdmi-Cable-5362/224074...

I am not an expert in this area, so I can't say for sure.

Keep an eye out for a 2 meter Wire World Silver Starlight 5-2 HDMI cable on ebay. These do come up from time to time. There are currently 1 meter versions available now, but 2 meter is always better. This is just about the best HDMI cable I have found and is only 2nd to the $4k Nordost Valhalla HDMI cable. Even though it’s a really old cable, it’s made using 24awg heavily silver clad OCC copper conductors for the main i2s signal wires.  It's actually the only HDMI cable made that used OCC copper.

I’ve tested many other current model cables and rejected them. This old cable actually performs better than almost every other modern cable except for the Nordost Valhalla (which is insanely expensive). Cost for this Silver Starlight 5-2 is typically $300-500 used.

Uhmm, my understanding is i2s with an HDMI port can still use a standard HDMI cable. The i2s interface will not use all the conductors, but it’s just a standard HDMI cable.

An "i2s" specific HDMI cable will have missing conductors for several of the pins, but it still carries the same pin alignment for the remaining.

The Platinum Starlight 7, Silver Starlight 7, Starlight 7 and Silver Starlight 6 HDMI cables (along with Silver Starlight 6) all use the DNA Helix design. These are described as 23awg cables, but they are actually 2 x 26awg wires for each of the main HDMI signal conductors. I have personally tested the Silver Starlight 7 HDMI cable and it just did not perform as well as the other cables.

The $500 2 meter Silver Starlight 7 performed just about the same as my $100 cryo-treated Neotech NEHH-4200 HDMI cable. The Neotech is only a lightly silver plated 26awg conductors, but it performs at the same level. For video, I can see just a little bit of video noise. Audio was okay, but a little bit thin/bright and not as strong in bass.

The "Starlight 5-2" HDMI cable performed so much better than "Silver Starlight 7". The Starlight 5-2 uses silver-clad 24awg OFC solid-core copper conductors. Bass was a lot better as well as overall sound resolution. I also did not see the video noise with this cable as I did with "Silver Starlight 7".

The "Silver Starlight 5-2" uses the exact same design as "Starlight 5-2", but uses a much better OCC copper. It is still heavily silver clad 24awg conductors. This OCC cable just has significantly better color saturation and color sharpness/solidness in the video. Audio is also better. The "Starlight 5-2" was just a very tiny bit harsh in the audio when compared to the OCC "Silver Starlight 5-2".

I don’t know the reason why the new DNA Helix isn’t as good. One theory is that they use 2 x 26awg conductors for sending a digital signal. Those conductors are twisted along in the cable and could end up being unequal lengths. The +/- signal conductors in this cable are also twisted. This will cause distortion in the timing of the digital pulses. This is exactly Nordost’s theory and why they only engineer "parallel conductor" HDMI cables instead of twisted pair wiring. The 5-2 cables use the same parallel conductor design.  Another theory is that 26awg conductors just don't have the oomph as the larger 24awg conductors.

I have taken a look at that Tubulus HDMI cable. It looks like a great design. Uses pure silver solid-core conductors. The Revelation Audio Labs i2s cable on audiogon also uses pure silver solid-core (but they have had a history of bad customer service and massive manufacturing/shipping delays). You can also look at Crystal Cable HDMI from thecableco.com. However, none of these manufacturers actually tell you what awg the conductors are. Audioquest has their Diamond "pure silver", but I know that Audioquest uses very small conductors (like 30awg or 32awg). This is not going to have the impact that large conductor cables provide.

In addition, pure silver can be excellent, or it can come across as somewhat bright and sterile in some systems (even on digital cables). The Silver Starlight 5-2 with a good amount of OCC copper will provide a warmer and less bright/cold sound.

I'm not sure of your confusion.  Obviously, you cannot connect an i2s transport to a AV processor.  And you cannot connect a standard AV bluray player to an i2s DAC input.  However, all these devices use the same HDMI cable.  A standard AV HDMI cable can be used on any i2s device, as long as it's connecting an i2s transport to an i2s DAC.

I think you are thinking about the other way.  An HDMI cable that is built specifically and only for i2s DAC cannot be used on a normal bluray / AV receiver because it's missing several of the internal wires.  About 6 of the 19 wires are missing on these special "i2s only" HDMI cables.  (pins 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19).

I have spoken to people that have successfully used a normal Wire World Platinum 7 HDMI cable to connect the PS Audio transport and DirectStream DAC.  It works perfectly fine.