If you can make the 0.5m length work — that’s the shortest they seem to offer for this cable — then do that. i2S was initially designed to make connections internally within a component and so wasn’t designed for distance, so that’s the reason to keep length as short as possible. Some “experts” say optimally you want it to be a foot or less, but that’s not always practically feasible. Just FYI.
Showing 6 responses by soix
@agisthos That’s a bold statement. What other HDMI cables have you compared the Vivlink to? Also, a 2m cable would be suboptimal for an i2S connection as shorter is absolutely better so not sure where you got your info from. |
@agisthos While that may be true for some or maybe most digital cables it is not the case for i2S that was designed originally for very short lengths to be used to make connections internally within a component. It was not designed to travel distance and the signal degrades rapidly with length and any cursory reading on the topic makes this limitation very clear — i2S is a different animal from the more typical SPDIF or AES/EBU connection. The experts I’ve read on the topic actually recommend a length of a foot or less for an i2S cable if possible. |
Just for craps n giggles I’d suggest trying this very cheap HDMI cable from Monoprice maybe just to try i2S on the cheap and to compare to the others whenever. The reason I suggest this is twofold — while some people have found some benefit in using more expensive HDMI cables for i2S, others have found it makes a minimal difference and better to use the $$$ elsewhere. Second, I use this same cable in a 0.5 foot length between my DDC and the i2S input on my DAC and still realized substantial sonic improvements. While I do plan on trying the DH Labs cable at some point because I’m an audiophile and that’s how we roll, the results are so good now I’m really in no rush. Hey, at under $7 there’s not much to lose, and it’s still very valuable as a frame of reference going if nothing else. Just a thought FWIW. |